


the world is at my feet (i am standing on the ceiling)

by princessoftheworlds



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Episode: Big Finish Special: Torchwood One: Machines, Existential Crisis, M/M, Memory Alteration, Philosophy, Post-Episode: s02e05 Adam, Pre-Episode: s02e06 Reset, Retcon (Torchwood), Season/Series 02, Suspense, Torchwood One
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26675368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: Settling into a comfortable life at Torchwood Three, with a steady job saving the world and a deepening flirtation with his boss to fill their off hours, a moment of chance leads Ianto Jones to discover a disturbing truth about his past at Torchwood One.
Relationships: Ianto Jones & Yvonne Hartman, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Owen Harper & Ianto Jones, Rhiannon Davies & Ianto Jones, Rhiannon Davies & Jack Harkness
Comments: 33
Kudos: 76
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Bingo Fest 2020





	the world is at my feet (i am standing on the ceiling)

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea...late June during class, and it never let me go. It stuck through until the end of my course until I could finally write it and spent a month being written and edited. And here it is.
> 
> I strongly advise you only read ahead if you've listened to Torchwood One: Machines: Blind Summit, aka Ianto's origin story, which is exceptionally plot-relevant for this fic.
> 
> Thank you to Jacklynn (and Louise) for answering my constant questions about Ianto Jones and Blind Summit details I forgot an hour after I relistened to it. Further thanks to Jacklynn for giving this a preliminary read. Thank you to Mal for providing many arbitrary details about London and London traffic. And thank you to my close friend - you know who you are - who spent several, several hours listening to me bitch about this fic and later poring over it. You really made this great, as you do with all my writing.
> 
> This knocks off three of my squares for the Torchwood Fan Fest Bingo Fest: "secrets," "torchwood one," and "under the influence (alcohol, drugs, alien pheromones, etc)." 
> 
> Title from "Stronger than Ever" by Raleigh Ritchie.

_As they watch the sleek office building that had housed Blind Summit erupt into fiery yellow orbs of flame, smoke billowing up in clouds a shade darker than the foggy grey London sky, Ianto’s eyes widen. He’s had quite the day, what with his father going missing and then a posh woman claiming to be the head of a top-secret government organization recruiting him to go undercover as a lab rat and then finding out that said woman had been spending the last two months using him as a therapist and wiping his memories._

_ It’s enough to send anyone’s head in a spin. Even Ianto’s, and he’s never by any estimation been slow on the uptake. _

_He turns to Yvonne, who looks as sleek as ever, blond curls falling perfectly past her shoulders, despite the scrapes and bruises, and asks, “So where will I find my dad now?”_

_“Hush now, Ianto,” Yvonne responds in that tone that acknowledges that he spoke but is still slightly condescending; he’s started to learn that that’s just how Yvonne conducts herself with everyone. She doesn’t think she’s superior to him; she_ is _superior to him. “We need to finish clean up on Blind Summit.” To Tommy: “Call in the team. Have them sweep the site for any remains, catalogue them, and take them back to Canary Wharf. We can’t risk any more of Excellium falling into the wrong hands.” An elegantly manicured hand comes to rub at the base of her neck as she winces._

_“Yes, Yvonne.” Tommy, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a rough accent and crude demeanor, nods, eyebrows cocking together. Before he steps away to make that call, he slaps Ianto on the back hard enough for him to stumble forward. “Watch how Torchwood does clean up, Phil.”_

_“My name is Ianto,” Ianto retorts quietly, but Tommy either doesn’t hear him or chooses to ignore him. Mindful of his wobbling legs, Ianto asks Yvonne, “So who’s the right hands? This Torchwood?”_

_“As I told you, Ianto,” Yvonne begins and finally faces him for the first time since they arrived on this rooftop, “Torchwood is a top-secret organization sanctioned by the British government. We scavenge technology from beyond the stars and use it to arm Britain against the future. For Queen and country.”_

_“Right, right.” Ianto nods._ Queen and country _seems to be Yvonne’s motto; she says the words like she breathes them and bleeds them. “And where’s my dad then?”_

_Yvonne tosses back her head and laughs, a cool, elegant sound. “Oh, Ianto, I promise you, he’s safe. We’ll take you to see him as soon as we get Blind Summit cleared up. Why don’t you go admire the view for now?”_

_Head bowed, still feeling incredibly weak, Ianto obeys. He stumbles across the rooftop to gaze at the unobstructed view of London - all those sleek skyscrapers and slightly smaller office buildings, a grand view of the Thames if he turns a bit to the side. It’s a much better view than he gets from the lone window in his dingy flat._

_Ianto pivots on the heel of his cheap dress shoes, careful of the sharp lines of the borrowed suit he’s wearing. He likely should be concerned that he’s still stuck in the clothing of a dead man, but that’s rather low on his overall list of concerns, and besides, the suit feels almost natural on his body rather than restrictive. As he faces the opposing side of the rooftop, he feels an odd jolt run up his body, and his knees almost give way beneath him, but he straightens up, shaking his head to rid it of that dizzying feeling._

_The blood flowing through his veins is on fire, burning like it had been he was first injected with Excellium but worse. Ianto grits his teeth and whimpers in pain. Thankfully, Yvonne and Tommy are far enough away that they don’t hear his discomfort._

_He shouldn’t still be feeling this way. Yvonne had assured him that the side effects of its initial injection should have worn off, but Ianto is more skeptical; Excellium is a serum of_ literal alien origin _._

_“Ah, fuck,” Ianto groans, rubbing at the injection marks above the collar of his shirt. The skin there is numb. He glances there, expecting to see it discolored or something, but it just looks like regular skin, albeit with two tiny puncture marks. “Yvonne? Is Excellium supposed to have side effects?” Aside from literal insanity or super strength, that is._

_Preoccupied with giving orders to Tommy, she doesn’t hear him. They are both watching the smoldering ruins of the Blind Summit building, but Ianto is too tired and woozy to limp over there and watch with them._

_The burning takes a turn for the worse until Ianto feels like his body is in pure agony. His knees fully give way beneath him, and he crumbles to the ground, his bones feeling awfully fragile when he collides with the rough cement. His heart beats out a percussionist’s vivacissimo - rapid, lively, and out of control - as the burning sensation extends to Ianto’s organs and chest. His entire body is going up in flames, just like the building had only moments previous._

_“_ Yvonne! _” Ianto manages to croak just loud enough that the faint sound of Yvonne’s voice cuts off. Sharp heels clack across the cement, only quickening and becoming louder as they approach Ianto._

_Ianto’s vision is rapidly going dark and hazy, and Yvonne appears in his eyeline as a blurry black pantsuit and hand._

_“Tommy,” Yvonne barks. “Ianto’s collapsed.”_

_“It’ll be the shock, Hartman,” Tommy grunts back. “I’ll get the Arachmed. Phil will be right as rain in a few minutes.”_

_“I don’t feel so good,” wheezes Ianto, slowly rolling on his side to glance up towards the sky. “Was Excellium supposed to do this?”_

_“Do what?” Yvonne asks sharply, and she sounds almost concerned. “What does it feel like, Ianto?”_

_His thoughts are scattering like confetti. “Feel like it’s burning up my veins.” There is a dull ache beginning behind his eyes. “It_ hurts _, Yvonne.” A beat. “I want my mum.” He wants Glenda Jones to run a warm hand across his forehead and murmur soft nonsense to him just like she used to when he was sick. He mumbles, “Body’s on fire.” His words slur, and then the breath catches in his lungs, his body giving in to its exhaustion._

_A cool hand ghosts out to touch Ianto._

_“Christ, Tommy. I need you here.” Yvonne’s voice is high-pitched, losing some of that condescension. “He’s dead!”_

* * *

“ _Et voila!_ ” Jack sings triumphantly as he swings around from the stove in Ianto’s kitchen. A plate of steaming, fluffy waffles descends before a patient Ianto, who quickly raises his fork and knife and slices into them. Jack waggles his eyebrows. “Thoughts?”

Ianto chews and swallows, thoughtful, before setting down his fork. “They’re mostly cooked this time but still a little raw and more salty than they need to be.” When Jack pouts: “I thought cooking was a skill you’d have picked up in the army...or at least in the last hundred years you lived in Cardiff.”

Jack scowls playfully, sitting opposite Ianto at the dining table. “They don’t teach you how to make waffles during the Great War or during World War II.” He lifts his fork, stabbing it towards Ianto. “What’s your excuse? You’re a twenty-something Welshmen.”

“Exactly.” Ianto crams another piece of waffle into his mouth and says in a slightly muffled voice, “No twenty-something Welshman knows how to cook.”

“Or has manners.” Jack dodges the crumbs that spew from Ianto’s mouth. “I guess you can’t always continue to act as polite and pristine as you do in the Hub. Man’s gotta rest sometimes.” He sips at his coffee, and then his eyes light up. “You can make coffee.”

“Coffee’s different,” replies Ianto, plate almost empty despite his complaints. “Cooking’s subjective. Coffee is an art...an exact science.” He polishes off his waffle and drops his fork to his table with a clang. “I spent months as a barista in London.”

Eagerly, Jack leans forward; like Jack’s past, Ianto’s life pre-Torchwood is a subject brought up rarely. “Did you wear suits when you worked in the coffee shop?”

Ianto rolls his eyes. “I didn’t start wearing suits until I worked at the museum here in Cardiff.” He stands, stretching his legs out, and lifts his plate and mug, carrying them over to the sink. When Jack attempts to ask a question: “Nope, that’s enough backstory from me today. Put your plate in the sink; I’ll be in the shower.” He presses a quick kiss to Jack’s frowning mouth and leaves the kitchen.

The Rift is kind to them today. They’ve already had a rather lovely Saturday morning lie-in that began with Ianto getting a toe-curling handjob from Jack and ended with lazy snogging. Once Ianto has showered and has pushed Jack into taking a shower, they lay on the couch in Ianto’s living room, Ianto resting his head on Jack’s chest. Jack mindlessly strokes Ianto’s damp hair.

After a while, Ianto drowsily lifts his head and says, “I was thinking of visiting Rhiannon tonight. Johnny takes the kids to visit his parents the first Saturday of the month, so we should be alone.”

“Oh?” Jack lifts his head to glance down at Ianto. “That sounds nice.”

“What will you do while I’m gone?”

Jack shrugs. “I’ll probably find a new rooftop with a nice view. Or clean up the Hub a bit. I could play basketball with Myfanwy.” 

“You won’t win,” Ianto teases, lips quirking into a slight smile. “She has the advantage of flight on her side.”

“I’ll take some dark chocolate from your collection.” Jack cranes his head to kiss away Ianto’s pout, and that sweet gesture ultimately evolves to snogging filthily on the couch, lunch all but forgotten.

* * *

“Well, this is unexpected,” Rhiannon says just a bit snidely as she opens the door to find Ianto standing outside, holding a bottle of wine. “Finally remembered we existed, did you?”

Rolling his eyes, Ianto lifts up the bottle, allowing Rhiannon to see the expensive wrapping; this isn’t a cheap bottle he picked up from Tesco earlier. “It’s been a busy month for the Tourist Board.”

“You’re a civil servant,” Rhiannon grumbles but still steps aside to allow Ianto entry into the cluttered home. “What do they have you do, saving the world?”

_Yes, in fact, they do,_ Ianto imagines saying to his sister, huffing a laugh. He carefully avoids stepping on Mica’s stuffed animals and David’s Legos as he journeys to the kitchen. “Did you eat dinner already?”

Behind him, Rhiannon is picking up the toys and dropping them in a small bucket near the doorway to the living room. “You should learn how to cook. You can’t live off of takeaways forever.”

“That’s what Jack says,” Ianto retorts. Then his cheeks burn brightly as he realizes what he’s just said, but thankfully, Rhiannon doesn’t seem to have taken notice.

“Jack that drill sergeant of a boss of yours?” Rhiannon pushes Ianto into a chair at the dining table and busies herself in the kitchen. “You’re in luck. I made meatloaf yesterday, and surprisingly, Johnny left just enough for a meal for one...two if we stretch it.” Dishes clatter around, Ianto wincing with each loud sound, and the microwave beeps and whirs until she finally places the steaming plate on the dining table alongside a wine opener. Then she sits opposite Ianto.

The meatloaf, a rather small portion, is gone quickly, but the wine lasts for a while. 

Rhiannon has a low tolerance, so it doesn’t take her long to get tipsy and pink-cheeked, but Ianto needs a few more glasses of wine. Soon enough, however, Ianto finds himself describing how last month, he was forced to ward off a family of tourists insistent on seeing the Tower of London...in Cardiff. Rhiannon doesn’t need to know that it was a family of P’rons rather than Americans. She reciprocates with a story about Mica getting told off by her teacher for punching a boy buying her at school.

“I had to limit her telly time,” Rhiannon explains, leaning back in her chair, grip loose around her empty wine glass, “since I couldn’t tell her that I was proud of her standing up for herself.” She hiccups. “Ms. Smith frowns upon violence. She’s a bit posh. Came down from London to teach children from the local estate.”

Ianto snorts into his own glass. He remembers growing up on the estate, and though it’s cleaned up a fair bit, somethings don’t change. Ianto himself used to skulk around with a pack of boys as a teen, shoplifting and tagging old buildings around the estate. They were all arrogant little twats, but it was definitely better than his goth phase.

“Sounds like Mica is doing fine,” Ianto comments, sipping at his wine. “What about David?”

“David?” Rhiannon’s eyebrows rise. “He tried to learn how to pick a lock the other day. Messed up the doorknob so badly that I had to run to Asda later.” She sighs, setting her glass on the table. “He’s almost worse than you as a kid. At least you were fairly quiet and kept out of everyone’s way.”

Now this conversation is heading into territory that Ianto isn’t necessarily comfortable with; talking with Rhiannon has proven time and time again that they don’t share the same memories of their childhood...or their father. Ianto’s alcohol-hazed brain decides to take control of the conversation.

“Well, the highlight of my week was always taking the bus to see Nan on the weekends,” Ianto replies, words beginning to slur, “so anyone would be worse than me as a kid.”

Rhiannon’s face lights up. “Oh, Nan! I miss her.” She smiles softly. “I still can’t believe Mum and Dad let us keep that cat she found.”

Ianto’s brow furrows. “What cat?”

“The little tabby from under the porch,” Rhiannon says, a small scratch forming between her brows. “Nan found her shivering there when she came to visit us for Christmas. You named her Stripes.”

“Stripes,” Ianto echoes.

“You used to sneak her scraps of Mum’s brisket. You were heartbroken when she ran off a few months later!” Her eyes narrow at Ianto. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Nope. I’m probably too drunk at the moment,” jokes Ianto. It sounds awkward to his own ears, but Rhiannon, rising to her feet and collecting the plate and her glass, doesn’t notice as she snatches Ianto’s glass from his grasp, drains the last dregs of his wine, and carries everything to the kitchen sink. As the tap runs, Ianto’s mind begins to whir as quickly as the wine will let it.

Something’s wrong; something’s off. 

If there’s something that he’s always been able to count on himself for, be _counted on_ for, it’s always been his eidetic memory. That’s what made Ianto a good archivist and junior researcher and what makes him Jack’s right-hand man. He can remember almost everything from his life. _Almost everything._ There’s those forty-eight hours the team is missing that Jack forbade them from looking into and now this missing memory that Rhiannon remembers. It’s not even one memory; it’s an entire set of memories centered around this cat named Stripes.

With a pit of icy dread growing in his stomach, Ianto frowns, certain that something is wrong with him.

* * *

That following Monday morning - the whole day of Sunday lost to fighting off invading aliens that Jack vaguely recognized from the Pol Galaxy, Ianto approaches Owen and asks him to run a few tests on him, Jack, Gwen, and Tosh half-way across Cardiff to check out a Rift alert Ianto manufactured.

“I’m sorry,” Owen says, staring blankly back at Ianto, “but did you just ask me to run a full medical check on you, complete with alien scanners that Jack has only permitted for emergency use because their potential radioactive side effects, just because you couldn’t drunkenly remember a childhood pet?”

“Well, it sounds ridiculous when you put it like that,” Ianto grumbles. He then sighs. “Owen, when have you _ever_ known me to forget things? I remember every detail. Every single detail.” Memories of their mutual mission to Hengoed come back to mind, and judging by the slight furrowing of Owen’s brow, he’s remembering the same. 

“Everyone forgets things, mate,” Owen replies, but he’s sounding a little more uncertain.

“ _I don’t,_ ” Ianto insists. “Even now, I still don’t remember that cat, and the details that my sis...that were described to me are far too specific to be anything but actual memories.” Sensing Owen’s resolve weakening, he tries his final argument, a concern that’s been haunting him for days: “What if my slight amnesia is a side effect of our missing forty-eight hours? Jack has warned us off looking into it, but if the entire team is potentially at risk, I think he would overlook us disobeying his orders.” He glances up at Owen. “Do you?”

Owen inhales sharply, lips pressing together tightly. Then he drops his shoulders, rolling his eyes. “Fine, _fine,_ ” he says, “but no telling Jack.” A beat. “Now sit on the examination table.”

“You dissect alien bodies there,” Ianto points out but still hops onto the metal slab.

“And you clean their entrails,” retorts Owen. “I’m going to start with the Bekaran scanner for a quick check and then run any further tests if necessary.”

Ianto sits still on the examination table, doing his best to keep from squirming, while Owen runs the greenish-grey boxy scanner over first his legs and arms, his torso, then finally moving up from his neck towards his head. Finally, the Bekaran scanner beeps its completion, and Owen pulls it back towards him, forehead wrinkling as he frowns. Fluttering anxiety builds up in Ianto’s chest.

“Odd,” Owen says. “Your brain is fine, but there’s traces of Retcon in your hair,” - he catches Ianto’s perplexed look - “which can happen with some drugs. That could possibly be from our missing forty-eight hours, but that doesn’t explain the faint buildup of Retcon in your liver and kidney. It’s been several weeks; the Retcon should have disappeared from your bloodstream by now.”

“What does it mean?” Ianto asks. The knot in his chest only tightens, as does his grip on the cold metal of the examination table.

“I don’t know,” replies Owen, “but I’m going to run some more intensive blood tests.” He rummages around the medbay briefly before reappearing by Ianto’s side wearing rubber gloves and holding a wickedly-long needle. “Hold still. You’ll just feel a little prick.” He snorts. “I bet that’s what Jack says.”

“Nothing’s little with Jack,” Ianto says nonchalantly, hiding his triumphant grin when he sees Owen grimace and try to blink away the mental image. When Owen dabs his skin with a damp, cold cotton swab and wraps a rubber tourniquet around his arm before finally sliding the needle directly into a vein, he feels - as Owen predicted - a slight pinch and then is forced to turn his gaze away.

“Squeamish?” Owen mocks. “Thought you and Jack would love bloodplay.”

“I am an avid fan of keeping my blood inside my body, where it belongs,” - Ianto holds his body unnaturally stiff, aware of the tightness of the tourniquet and the tingling of his fingers - “especially in cases where there might be something wrong with me.”

Thankfully, Owen doesn’t respond. He only slides the needle free of Ianto’s skin, sprays the tiny puncture mark with an accelerated growth serum some previous Torchwood medic came up with, and watches it heal close. Then he wanders over to the bulky forty-sixth century medical scanner and taps once on the thin vial of Ianto’s blood before dropping the smallest pearl of blood on the thin translucent plate, which he then slides into the scanner.

“And now,” he begins, stripping his gloves off before tossing them into the biohazard bin and then washing his hands, “we wait.” 

Less than two minutes later, the scanner emits a low-pitched piercing wail, and Owen hurries to his computer monitor and pulls up Ianto’s blood results. Ianto slips off the examination table and peers at the screen over Owen’s shoulder.

Owen shrugs. “It’s not telling me anything new.” He nods towards Ianto. “You drink too much coffee and need to eat more vegetables.”

_He sounds like Jack,_ Ianto thinks, rolling his eyes, but then Owen says something that causes the floor to drop out from underneath Ianto’s feet.

“Huh.” Owen’s thin eyebrows knit together, eyes narrowing. “There’s an unusual level of Retcon buildup in your blood. It’s almost more than Max, the psycho that Suzie had been drugging.” He inhales sharply, glancing back at Ianto. “Mate, this goes back further than our forty-eight hours.”

Ianto’s mouth goes dry. His fingers come down hard to grip the edge of the counter, knuckles going white. “When’s the earliest from?” he rasps. 

“Gimme a minute,” replies Owen distractedly, his computer mouse clicking rapidly as he moves through pages of data on his monitor. “The earliest traces of Retcon appears to be from…four years ago.” His eyes widen. “Circa 2004.”

“I thought Retcon wasn’t supposed to stay in the bloodstream,” Ianto says numbly, mind whirring away at the possibilities. 

“Yes, but no one really knows just how advanced that scanner is, so who even knows?” Owen mutters as he continues to read the results. “ _Bloody hell, Ianto!_ You were Retconned repeatedly over the span of two years, sometimes as frequently as twice in one day.” He whirls around in his desk chair, face pale when he makes eye contact with Ianto. “No one really knows what being Retconned this much could do to someone. Never mind Suzie’s psycho, you’re fucking lucky you didn’t turn into a vegetable!”

_March 2005,_ thinks Ianto panickedly. That’s when he’d first joined Torchwood London after working with Yvonne on the Viking ship excavation. She’d suggested, in her slightly condescending, standoffish manner, he’d be a good fit, and she hadn’t been wrong; Ianto had risen from junior researcher to Yvonne’s PA in the matter of months. She’d trusted him immensely, which Ianto had always found odd for such a secretive woman, and delegated many duties involved in almost running Canary Wharf to him.

But above everything, even above her own family, Yvonne believed in Queen and country and would have done anything to protect Torchwood and her secrets, including liberally using Retcon.

_It could only have been her,_ realizes Ianto, heart sinking to his stomach, body numb. But why so often, why so repeatedly? What had Ianto discovered that Yvonne didn’t want him knowing?

He remembers the mornings he woke up with a pounding headache and blurry recollections of the previous night that he’d always blamed on going out with Lisa and their friends. The days he arrived at Canary Wharf, and it felt the deja vu. People joking he repeated suits too frequently and that Yvonne didn’t pay him enough.

_Oh, Christ_ . What if it wasn’t Yvonne didn’t want him knowing but rather something she was afraid of him _remembering?_ What had Ianto done that Yvonne thought too harmful for him to remember? Who had he _hurt?_

Something acidic bubbles up at the back of Ianto’s throat, but he chokes it down, along with his cresting panic. The back of his throat burns. He isn’t aware of how his eyes hollow and fixate on the same dried splotch of alien blood on the tiles from one of Owen’s failed autopsies. Ianto’s scrubbed hard and long at the stubborn stain, but it persists despite all the cleaners he has tried, alien and human.

“You alright, mate?” Owen asks softly.

“Yes,” Ianto lies. Then: “No.” His vision blurs. “Fuck, _fuck._ ” His swearing is guttural. The medbay, with all of its solid and clinically precise equipment, feels unsteady now that he knows what he thought was real is a lie; he wants Jack, wants to lean into his warm solidity - _no!_ Jack can’t know. What will Jack think when he learns that Ianto not only lied to him about who he was and what he did at Canary Wharf and that he _can’t even remember?_ No, Jack definitely can’t know. Not at least until Ianto remembers.

“Here, sit down” Gently, Owen guides him to sit on the cold tile, hovering a hand awkwardly by Ianto’s side. “Drink some water.”

Inhaling sharply, Ianto snatches the bottle from Owen and allows the cool water to rinse out the sharp taste from the back of his throat. He drains near half the bottle before screwing the cap back on and setting it on the ground next to him.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Owen asks, voice still gentle. After a moment, he helps Ianto rise to his feet and lean against the wall. 

Shakily, Ianto nods, but Owen’s frown doesn’t disappear.

“Ianto,” he begins cautiously, “I don’t think that your memory loss extends to the rest of the team, but there’s still something wrong with you. I think we need to tell Jack.”

“No,” Ianto says so loudly and suddenly that Owen startles. “Not Jack. We’re not telling Jack.”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Owen insists, “but he needs to know. We need to know how the Retcon could have affected you long term.” He turns to the monitor, putting his back to Ianto, and orders the reports to the printer.

“I’m sorry too, Owen,” Ianto says hoarsely, his movements nevertheless calm as he appears by Owen’s side. The syringe needle of the fast-acting sedative slides as easily as butter into Owen’s skin as Ianto presses down on the injector. Owen’s brown eyes widen in betrayal and rage, but his body goes slack before he can growl at Ianto. Ianto quickly catches him and carries him to the examination table with weak, shaking arms. “Forgive me.”

As someone responsible for cleaning the medbay every afternoon, Ianto knows its layout, possibly even better than Owen himself, so he’s quick in cleaning his mess up. The liquid Retcon is injected swiftly into Owen’s bloodstream, and then all three used syringes are tossed into the biohazard waste which Ianto later burns. The Retcon is replaced with a supply from long term storage as is the bit of accelerated growth serum he uses to heal the two needle marks on Owen. 

Ianto then meticulously deletes his scans from the Bekaran scanner, the forty-sixth century scanner, and Owen’s computer and downloads a virus that causes the system to crash for good measure. Tosh will likely assume that Owen was watching highly-pirated porn again when she tries to fix it. 

He moves Owen’s body to his desk and wipes down every single inch of the medbay for DNA traces before deleting the CCTV footage for the last hour.

Ianto’s sitting on the couch drinking coffee when Owen stumbles his way, hair mussed.

“Was I sleeping at my desk again?” he complains, scowling at Ianto’s coffee. “I knew I shouldn't have gone to the pub last night.”

Taking another sip, Ianto shrugs. “You’re lucky Jack wasn’t around to chew you out again.” Then he gets up to make Owen his own coffee.

Twenty minutes later, Jack, Gwen, and Tosh come trudging through the cog wheel door, Jack complaining loudly about “driving half-way across the city for an empty fucking field.”

“Ianto!” Tosh cries when she finally logs onto her computer. “Was Myfanwy flying in the Hub again? She knocked out the CCTV system. We lost about an hour-and-a-half of footage.”

“Sorry, Tosh,” replies Ianto sheepishly, smiling. “I can assure you, the only thing you missed was me cleaning the medbay again and Owen napping at his desk.”

“You little-” Owen begins at the same time Tosh frowns and asks, “Owen, have you been watching porn on your computer again?” Then Owen stiffens, eyes wide, and flees to the medbay to not incur Tosh’s wrath again.

* * *

The inside of Ianto’s bedroom is still and dark, moonlight filtering in through the gap in the curtains to illuminate a patch of hardwood. Outside, the city of Cardiff is silent for once; there is no sound of people yelling intelligibly or of rubbish bins clattering or of cars driving past. 

Ianto lies there, Jack’s head pillowed on his chest, softly stroking through Jack’s hair, and wonders how much of the last five years of his life is actually his.

If Yvonne knew how to take memories away, she likely also knew how to give false ones. Is anything, is _everything_ , Ianto knows and remembers about his time at Torchwood One a lie? 

Briefly, Ianto wonders if his entire life, if Ianto Jones himself, is something Yvonne concocted, but then he realizes just what he’s questioning and snorts. He’s real. He knows he’s real. He’s Ianto Jones, born August 19, 1983. His mother is Glenda Jones, his sister Rhiannon Davies. He loves Star Wars and James Bond, can’t stand the taste of certain vegetables like carrots and peppers. He’s only ever loved once in his life, and he lost her, but he thinks he could love Jack.

Ianto is real; he has to be.

At that thought, he shivers, but the air is warm, almost stifling. Ianto lets the weight of Jack’s body across his, the overpowering heat of the blanket, Jack’s quiet breathing, he lets it all ground him.

There has to be a way he can retrieve his memories, right? Gwen did it, broke the Retcon; granted, she had enough of a trigger with Suzie’s murder weapon. But Ianto also knows that Gwen was a one-in-a-thousand case. For every Gwen, there’s thousands of people Torchwood has Retconned, ranging from those wiped of a few unfortunate minutes of seeing a Weevil to alien possession victims. 

And then there’s the question of whether Ianto would even want to remember what he’s lost. There’s every chance that Yvonne wiped certain memories out of the kindness of her heart - a concept which would seem impossible to many, but Ianto knew that Yvonne did care deeply for a chosen few, Ianto included. Then, there’s also the chance Yvonne wiped Ianto’s memories, because of something he’d done, that they’d done. 

The ends justify the means, which Torchwood One and Yvonne had believed heavily in. So had Ianto at a certain point, and although Jack and Torchwood Three has helped show him that there are other, less _cold_ ways to go about saving Cardiff and humanity, Ianto wouldn’t regret the lives he helped save and - in some cases - improve even. He also knows that Jack would make some of those same impossible, ruthless decisions that Canary Wharf did in a snap if it ever came to it.

But could there have been something Ianto was involved in where he and Yvonne, or he alone, made a decision that came at an extreme, horrifying cost, even for Torchwood One?

Ianto knows he’s capable of darkness, of cruelty, of acting on that deep-rooted vein of anger he inherited from his father. He helped Yvonne and Jack Retcon so many, he betrayed Jack twice - once with Lisa and then with the Rift. In Serenity Plaza, he watched as Jack was forced to murder hundreds of Sleeper agents who had been so human. 

_What else could he have done that he doesn’t remember?_

Ianto shudders and turns his head to the side, his fingers stilling in Jack’s hair. He’s terrified by that thought, terrified that he could have hurt someone and doesn’t know it. Lately, in fact, some of his nightmares have changed: he’ll be stalking down a dark, rain-slick alley, a terrified woman at the other end, and he’ll crowd her against the wall as she scream and _screams,_ his every finger twitching to wrap around her smooth neck and _squeeze._ Those nights, Ianto wakes up sweating and paralyzed with horror. 

“Stop thinking so hard,” Jack murmurs drowsily and nestles his head closer and higher on Ianto’s chest, nuzzling at the skin with his nose through the thin cotton of Ianto’s sleep shirt. “I can practically hear your mind working.”

With a sudden splash of cold shock pouring over him, Ianto’s heart nearly beats out of his chest. _Jack can’t know,_ he thinks instantly. _Jack can never know._

Jack needs him; he needs someone to ground him, to remind him that there is life and love beyond Torchwood and the Rift. And there’s only so much Gwen, Tosh, and Owen can do. So, yes, Jack needs Ianto, and selfishly, Ianto needs Jack too. Wants Jack.

Affecting a calm tone, Ianto says, “I thought you were asleep.” He can feel Jack shake his head slightly, sighing and pressing his hair further into Ianto’s hand like a sleepy cat.

“Nope,” whispers Jack. “Haven’t been sleeping. Some nights, I just like to lie here awake while you sleep. It’s reassuring to hear the constant beat of your heart.”

Ianto files this tidbit under particular knowledge he’s gleaned about Jack at the most unexpected time. “You need to get some rest,” he insists, resuming his light massage of Jack’s head. Jack purrs. “Tosh’s predicted a chaotic week for the Rift.”

Jack snorts lightly, sounding more awake. “Like that Rift alert this morning?”

“I believe that was just a fluke,” Ianto offers, burying his guilt down. It had been necessary to lie to Jack and the others and to Retcon Owen, he tells himself. “Her program’s 94% accurate.”

“Oh, it’s more accurate than Tosh thinks,” Jack replies offhandedly. “Tosh knows she’s brilliant, but she doesn’t know that she has one of the brightest minds I’ve met in too many decades. She’s smarter than a lot of her Torchwood predecessors.” He gazes up at Ianto. “Now, what’s troubling you?”

A sharp stab of panic runs through Ianto. “Nothing, nothing important.”

“You may not know this about me, Ianto,” begins Jack blithely, “but I’ve been around long enough to recognize a blatant lie when I see one. And you’re also not one to fret unless it’s weighing on you.” He narrows his eyes. “ _Spill._ ”

“I can’t stop thinking about those forty-eight hours we lost,” blurts out Ianto and feels Jack stiffen against his chest, “those forty-eight hours we were Retconned of.”

“Ianto,” Jack says. “I told you we shouldn’t look into it. There’s a reason we Retconned ourselves.”

“I know, Jack,” Ianto replies, and then his words become pleading, “but I need to know. _I can’t just keep not knowing._ How do you go on, missing memories of your life, knowing memories were taken from you?”

Jack lifts his head from Ianto’s chest, straightening up, and Ianto immediately misses the warmth and weight against his skin. Jack fixes him with an unusually sober expression, his handsome face illuminated by the moonlight. “You must,” he tells Ianto. “There is no other choice.” He inhales sharply, and something flickers through his eyes, something quick and unreadable. Ianto bites back a remark about Jack being enigmatic and cryptic, because next, Jack does what he so rarely does; he _explains._ “You remember what John said about me being a Time Agent?”

“Yes,” Ianto says quickly. “He also said that your Time Agency had shut down and that there were only seven of you left.”

Eyebrows lifting, Jack looks briefly amused. “Oh, my Ianto Jones,” - he reaches out to stroke quickly along Ianto’s cheekbone, and Ianto leans into the touch - “you really do know everything.”

“It’s my job,” retorts Ianto but is gently shushed by Jack.

“Trying to explain what the Time Agency did would keep us here forever,” Jack says, “but as Time Agents, we would be sent on missions across time and space, and we would be forced to make decisions, hard decisions, to save lives.”

“Like now,” Ianto surmises. “Like Torchwood….minus the time and space part.”

“Well, yes.” Jack shrugs. “But I was a different man back then. I was more like John than you would have liked. Selfish, amoral, arrogant.” When he sees Ianto open his mouth, he swiftly leans forward to plant a swift kiss against Ianto’s lips before briefly leaning their foreheads together. “No more interrupting. You asked a question, and I’m trying to answer.”

Ianto rolls his eyes, causing Jack to huff a laugh, but motions for Jack to continue.

“One day, I woke up and realized that I was two years older than I had been yesterday...or at least than what I thought had been yesterday,” explains Jack, and Ianto inhales sharply. It’s bad enough to lose large chunks of time across several years but to lose _two whole years_ … “The Time Agency had taken two years of my life, two years of my memory, and so I left. I was angry, hurting, convinced that I would find out what had happened and get revenge. Then I met the Doctor.” Jack smiles sadly. “And now, after everything, I don’t really care about those two years I lost any more.”

“What is two years in the scale of two hundred?” whispers Ianto.

“Exactly.” Jack nods. “Before I spent the Doctor, I spent months, years, wondering what had happened, why I’d forgotten. I can sympathize, Ianto; I really can. But two years, two days, they were taken from us for a reason, and I think the not knowing is a price worth paying if it means keeping Cardiff safe.” He lifts Ianto’s hand in his and presses a kiss to the sensitive inner skin of Ianto’s wrist, and Ianto shivers.

“I understand,” Ianto says, and he means it. He won’t go looking for their missing forty-eight hours; he can’t betray Jack’s trust like that, not any further. But that promise doesn’t extend any further.

Yvonne Hartman took Ianto’s memories, and Ianto’s going to find out why. And if he can, he’s going to get them back. That’s the only way he’ll find any peace with himself.

Jack grins his ever-so-elusive lopsided smile, the genuine one, the one he seems to save for only Ianto. “I’m glad,” he replies. “Now, isn’t it time you got to sleep? You actually need sleep unlike me.”

“Fifty-first century genetics?” Ianto presumes, teasing.

“More like chronic insomnia and immortality.”

“You’re not going to go brood out on a rooftop at this time of night,” warns Ianto.

Jack rolls his eyes. “Of course, sir,” he drawls. Inhaling sharply, Ianto bites his lip, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Jack, who chuckles. “Really? Now?”

“I’m not going to get any sleep tonight,” Ianto replies, “so we may as well make the most of the hours.” Swiftly, he latches onto Jack’s wrist and pulls him down until the other man collapses against him. Then Ianto rolls them over until he’s on top, straddling Jack. 

They gaze at each other, eyes just as wide as their barely visible smiles. Ianto can feel every inch of Jack’s body pressed up against his, and hungrily, he swoops down to kiss Jack hard. Their legs tangle together. Jack’s hands come to Ianto’s shoulders, one slipping up to tug appreciatively at Ianto’s already mussed hair. 

They part for breath, panting, and Ianto nuzzles his nose against Jack’s impressive jawline. He opens his mouth to speak, and a loud yawn slips out instead.

Jack’s expression is smug, resembling the cat who caught the canary. “I thought you weren’t tired,” he teases, nose wrinkling. The hand not caught in Ianto’s hair rubs soothing circles on Ianto’s back.

“Shut up,” Ianto grumbles back. 

“Come here.” Slipping free from under Ianto, Jack shifts to one side of the bed and stretches out an arm, motioning for Ianto to nestle closer. Ianto wriggles across the bed until he pushes against Jack’s chest, their legs tangling together again. Ianto tucks his head into the curve of Jack’s shoulder, drowsily breathing in Jack’s heady pheromones, and Jack wraps a possessive arm around his waist. “I’ll keep you safe,” he whispers into Ianto’s hair.

_Oh, Jack,_ Ianto’s sleep-hazy mind thinks, _if only some things were under your control._

* * *

The next chunk of several hours that Ianto gets free of Torchwood, Jack, and aliens is not for a few more weeks, so Ianto waits patiently, brimming with nervous energy, too many questions, and horror at what he may find, until he’s finally free.

He leaves his cell phone behind, pays an exorbitant amount for a taxi to drive him to Swansea, and finds a public library on the furthest edge of the city. Feeling like James Bond, he flashes a forged library card at the receptionist and soon finds himself seated before a computer, which he uses his false credentials to log into.

The thing about Torchwood is that the entire database for Torchwood One is housed on the same system as Torchwood Three; although Canary Wharf is gone, Tosh can still easily access their files. So can Ianto, and that’s why Yvonne’s most important files were hidden deep in the system, heavily password-protected. The one flaw of the Torchwood computer system in Yvonne’s opinion, however, was that it was accessible from anywhere, and she had some secrets that were _too secret,_ even for the director of Torchwood herself. Thus, Yvonne had had a completely separate system, secured by alien firewalls and completely unhackable, though Ianto is betting that if Tosh tried hard enough, she could get it. But Ianto, half-way decent with computers but not as much so as Tosh, doesn’t stand a chance.

Luckily, he doesn’t need to hack into the system, because he has the password.

“Alright, Yvonne,” he mutters, fingers poised on the computer keyboard, “let’s see what else you have been hiding from me.”

The first file that loads and pops up is related to the Void, and for the briefest moment, Ianto’s tossed back to his memories of the excitement at Torchwood One when they’d first started working on the project and is paralyzed with fear. Then, shuddering, he shakes the fear away and sets to work, filtering through the files starting from the first day he arrived in London in late 2003 until the newest file.

Ianto doesn’t have to search for very long, however. Dozens of files that Ianto barely skims through - some of Yvonne’s secrets are better off staying dead with her - later, he finds one dated barely days before he left London the first time and returned to Cardiff for his museum job. It’s a short file, more of a data entry really, that flags the use of Yvonne’s Torchwood credentials at a Torchwood One warehouse facility somewhere in London.

Except Ianto knows the locations of all of Torchwood One’s off-site facilities and their conditions. He doesn’t know this one. He wonders what could be at this warehouse, why Yvonne never told him about it. 

There’s an address, which Ianto immediately memorizes. Then, having found what he was searching for, he logs off the system and then off the computer, and for extra measure, uses a flashdrive of a virus Tosh developed to wipe the last two hours worth of computer activity off the library server. 

He smiles at the woman at the reception desk as he exits the building, catches a taxi back to Cardiff, and is sitting on his couch watching meaningless telly by the time Jack’s key jingles in the lock to his flat.

* * *

“What are you thinking?” Jack says as they stroll down the pavement to Ianto’s flat, shoulders brushing, a plastic bag of Chinese takeout swinging from the hand not ghosting near Ianto’s. “Goldfinger or A New Hope? I’m leaning more towards Bond, but I can be convinced,” - here, he smirks; clearly, his idea of being convinced involves a blowjob or handjob - “into letting go of my Star Wars criticisms for a bit.” When Ianto, deep in thought, doesn’t respond, Jack nudges him gently. “ _Ianto?_ ”

“I’m going to stay with my sister for the weekend,” Ianto blurts out, nearly trembling with guilt at having to lie to Jack. 

As they approach Ianto’s building, the front door to which Ianto unlocks with a jingle of his keys, Jack only hums thoughtfully, stepping closer to Jack. “Everything alright with Rhiannon?” He looks concerned.

Ianto forces himself to nod slowly. “Yes, Rhi and the kids are fine, but she could just use some extra help as Johnny will be away, and since Tosh said the Rift will be quiet, I figured…” He shrugs, not entirely sure what he figured, but Jack questions none of it. The noose around Ianto’s heart only cinches tighter. _When did it become so easy to lie to Jack?_

_Or had it always been,_ Ianto wonders, climbing the stairs up to his floor with his back to Jack. Has he always been able to play Jack easily, just like he did when he brought Lisa into the Hub?

No. Now, among all the lies and secrets Ianto’s been discovering these last few weeks, Jack has been the one constant truth. It would not do for Ianto to cast uncertainty on him, on their...relationship, for lack of a better word.

They enter Ianto’s flat and toe off their shoes before Jack places the bag of takeout on the kitchen table and turns to Ianto. “I’ll miss you,” he admits, head bowed, expression only the slightest bit of bashful; they’ve both grown deeply attached to each other and what they refuse to label.

Ignoring the sudden stab of regret he feels at his deception, Ianto strides closer and presses a quick, sweet kiss to Jack’s mouth. “I’ll only be in Newport,” he promises, though he knows that this weekend, everything could change or nothing could change. “I’ll be back soon enough.” Then he reaches around Jack to rifle through the bag, handing Jack his container of beef and broccoli before finding his own sweet and sour chicken.

Early the next morning, Ianto rises from his bed, strokes a gentle hand over the still slumbering Jack, and showers and dresses in a suit. He grabs the overnight bag he packed the previous evening before swapping his cell phone for a burner from under the loose floorboard beneath the couch where he keeps some of his other emergency Torchwood supplies. Jack knows about the other loose floorboard and the hidey-hole behind the bookcase but not this one. 

He’s mocked together a quick program that will locate him in and moving around Newport should Tosh or Jack check his location via his actual phone; it won’t be fool-proof, but it should be enough for a day or two. Besides, Jack seems to trust his ruse enough that Ianto doesn’t foresee having a problem.

After a quick meal, he slips into his Audi and drives several hours up to London, stopping to take a quick stretch break. It’s noon when he finally arrives at his hotel, pulling into the sparsely populated underground car park. He lifts his overnight bag from the boot of his Audi and slings it over his shoulder as he exits the stairs to street level.

“Hello,” he says politely to the pretty receptionist when she glances up from her computer monitor. “I’m here to check into my room. My name is James Grant.” And he holds up the forged driver’s licence to her to check before she nods, smiles, and hands him his electronic room key.

“Have a nice stay, Mr. Grant,” she calls after him.

Ianto takes the elevator to his floor, lucky to encounter no other guests. The electronic lock stalls briefly when he swipes his key, before flashing green and disengaging with a click.. He pushes the door open with his shoulder, dropping his bag to the floor once the door falls securely shut behind him. For extra measure, he turns and slides the manual lock.

His hotel room is actually quite decent and clean for its price, done in tasteful shades of tan and an apricot-colored orange. The bed is surprisingly large and serves as the focal point, littered with a mountain of throw pillows. Briefly, Ianto misses Jack, who would have cracked a remark about breaking the bed in. There’s the usual television, dresser, and nightstand along with a pair of armchairs in the corner, pressed up against the large window overlooking busy London streets. Immediately, Ianto draws the pale curtains shut. 

The bathroom is small but gleaming, and more importantly, there is a fairly new coffee machine on the sink counter. It comes fully stocked with its own packets of instant coffee, but luckily, Ianto brought his own. 

After checking for bugs and cameras with a scanner temporarily “borrowed” from the Hub, he heaves his overnight bag onto the dresser and folds away his two sets of casual clothes. Wearing a suit in the areas he wants to go would only serve to make him more easily recognizable, which he can’t afford. 

An hour of meaningless telly later, Ianto’s stomach rumbles, so he grabs his wallet and heads to an area where he knows he’ll be able to find a chippie that takes cash.

Then he wanders the streets of London for a while, a phantom in this city that used to be his home, in this city where he found purpose and met Lisa and lost everything. Luckily, he’s far away enough that he won’t be going anywhere near Canary Wharf; facing _those demons_ is not what Ianto’s here for nor does he ever wish to go near Canary Wharf ever again in his life.

The more Ianto wanders, the more he feels out of place, a stranger, and the more he realizes that his home is now in Cardiff with Jack by his side, with Tosh, Gwen, and Owen by his side, where the definition of normality is Weevil hunting followed by drinks at the pub. His hands twitch to hold Jack, to breath in the scent of his pheromones. 

_Codependent much?_ he thinks wryly.

Eventually, the sun begins to sink as night approaches. Ianto turns around and heads back to his hotel, buying several bottles of cheap whisky along the way, also paid for with cash.

In his hotel room, Ianto pours a whisky into the hotel-provided mug and slumps in one of the armchairs, tie unknotted and hanging slack around his neck, the first few buttons of his shirt undone. This is him rumpled and on the eve of a potential breakdown, his legs propped in the opposing armchair. 

The whisky burns down Ianto’s throat like battery acid, but he supposes that he’d only get the quality that he paid for. Still, it warms his body, causes his cheeks to flush slightly, and dizzies his thoughts enough that he pours himself another glass. 

Tomorrow, everything could change. Tomorrow, nothing could change. Ianto has no way of knowing what he might find if he finds anything. He hasn’t even stopped to consider the possibility of no answers, of Yvonne being cryptic enough that Ianto will only find a layer of more digging. 

“You were a liar, Yvonne Hartman,” Ianto slurs, drunk faster than he thought he’d get. “Then again, you were Torchwood. We all were liars. To the world, to our families, to ourselves.”

He fishes out his burner phone and dials Jack’s phone number from memory, but he still has enough self-control left not to hit dial no matter how much he longs to hear Jack’s voice. They’re only separated by several hours and several hundred kilometers, but Jack could be on another planet for all Ianto knows.

“Grab a hold of yourself, Jones.” Ianto snorts bitterly and swirls his mug of whisky around as he gazes out at the dark street below. “No use falling apart now.” There’s no Jack to piece him back together. 

Ianto drinks perhaps another two glasses of whisky before his vision is blurred too much for him to make out the other side of the hotel room. Then, carefully, he forces himself to his feet and shuffles to the bathroom where he washes off the glass and drinks a full bottle of water before laying on the bed, still fully clothed. Subconsciously, he knows that tomorrow morning, his suit will be unbearably wrinkled, but sluggishly, he can’t bring himself to care. Who knows what answers tomorrow will hold for him, of what he’ll find in the warehouse?

_Oh, Mr. Jones,_ Yvonne’s familiar voice says in his mind as Ianto falls asleep, haunting him from beyond the grave. He can practically hear her clicking her tongue in disappointment. _Of course, I’ve lied to you. Did you think you were special? Anything for Queen and country._

Numbly, Ianto swims into the darkness of sleep.

* * *

The sun is barely breaking over the grey London sky when Ianto rouses in the hotel bed. His head is _aching_ , his body is sore, and his suit is all wrinkled, which he instantly hates. He slept fitfully. It isn’t that the bed was comfortable; it was, at least for a hotel room bed, but Ianto misses Jack intensely. The bed felt empty without Jack there, curled up into his side.

Sluggishly, Ianto slides from the bed and stumbles to the dresser. The world around him is woozy, but he digs through the top drawer, ignoring his gun and reaching for the alien hangover pills which Owen metabolized from the injection he previously used. He dry-swallows two and waits five unbearable minutes for the drums to still inside his head and for the fog to clear. It takes another five for Ianto to be able to think clearly and for his hunger to hit him in full force. 

A cold shower restores his body, and he emerges from the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist. His suit from last night is most definitely a temporary lost cause; it hurts Ianto to look at the wrinkles, so he folds it away the best he can into his overnight bag. It’s for his dry cleaner to deal with now. 

Ianto dresses quickly if a bit automatically in jeans and a jumper before sliding on the rarely-worn leather jacket that always makes Jack drool. He grabs his wallet, tucks his gun into the waistband of his jeans, and slides his feet into his trainers, also rarely worn. The casual clothes feel unfamiliar, almost alien on his body, which makes him snort. He’s only been wearing suits for several years now, since around the time he started at Torchwood One.

_No...that’s not right, is it?_ Ianto was wearing suits before that, for his job at the museum. He came back from London with an affinity for suits at the same time he gained an appreciation for coffee, but the several months at various different coffee shops on his resume which he barely remembers explains the coffee. So when did he start wearing suits?

_What else has Yvonne erased, has Yvonne taken?_

“I bet you’re laughing at me right now, Yvonne,” Ianto says, some of the fond memories of his former boss becoming a bit embittered. “Laughing at the valley boy you managed to fool and mold.”

_I made you better, Ianto Jones,_ Yvonne responds in Ianto’s mind. _I gave you potential, direction. I once told you that you were the future of Torchwood. I wasn’t lying then._

And the horrible thing is, Ianto thinks that the Yvonne in his head is telling the truth. Where would he be without Torchwood, without Yvonne? He would never have met Lisa, never would have met Jack or his friends.

His hands curl into fists, and he slams the hotel room door on his way out.

It’s so early, the bleak hours between the clubbers stumbling home and the pencil pushers rushing early to take the Tube, that the only place Ianto finds open is a convenience store run by a Pakistani man where he purchases a rather delicious bacon butty. He regrets having left his hotel room before drinking a cup of coffee, but he’s not going to torture his taste buds by purchasing coffee from the convenience store too.

He heads back to the hotel car park, guiding his Audi through the London streets, grateful that he’s several hours too early for the traffic to begin. A shiver grinds through him as he passes familiar neighborhoods, paths where his past self had walked, memories beckoning with phantom hands.

That is, what memories he still had.

When he finally nears his destination, he parks several streets away, double-checks his gun, and approaches the warehouse on foot.

It’s a typical warehouse, big, solid brick, dotted with multi-pane windows, and sitting towards the Thames. The door is heavy steel, alien steel, Ianto’s keen eye realizes. He’s willing to bet that it’s further reinforced. The slim scanner next to it is a bit more old-school, no facial or audio recognition or even a DNA scanner. Yvonne had been paranoid and knew far too well how easy said technologies were to fool. She’d preferred a singular but complex access code, which Ianto knows.

_Why worry about someone having a key if you wiped the house’s location off the map?_ muses Ianto. _There won’t be anywhere to break into then._

Very slowly and cautiously, he creeps forward and taps the scanner until a touchscreen keypad emerges; he thumbs in Yvonne’s access code, one digit or letter at a time, and then watches the scanner flash green, the internal mechanisms of the door sliding free and disengaging with quiet clicks. Then there is silence, not even the faint sounds of the city floating towards Ianto and the warehouse. 

Ianto stares at the door with bated breath; the door stares back. He reaches for the handle with trembling fingers. 

For a moment, as his fingers wrap around the cold metal, he thinks about turning back. Returning to his Audi and driving back to Cardiff. By the time he would reach, it would still be late morning. He could make a surprise appearance at the Hub or...if Jack wasn’t there, he could return to his flat and put on a James Bond movie. Cook Jack dinner. They could cuddle on the couch, have some wildly exhaustive sex, and then go on with their lives. Ianto doesn’t have to do this; he can live with the questions.

Except he can’t.

Except it’s too late. His hand is already wrenching the door backwards, and it gives far too easily for something hiding Yvonne’s secrets. The interior of the warehouse is shrouded in darkness for all Ianto can see, faintly illuminated by sunlight that flows in through the windows.

_Forward, Jones. Move forward._ But his feet won’t listen to his urging. Briefly, they stay planted to the ground, Ianto paralyzed with fear at what he may find.

Then slowly, slowly, he begins to move, venturing into darkness, and once he’s inched forward over the threshold of the warehouse, tugging the heavy door shut behind him, he hears a faint staticky sound as the fluorescent lights flicker on. Ianto’s blinded by the sudden brightness. He ducks his head, brings his hand to shield his view, and waits for his eyes to adjust.

When his eyes no longer burn, he lifts his head again and inhales sharply.

Ianto doesn’t know what he expected - maybe for the warehouse to be bigger on the inside like the TARDIS is rumored to be, but it is a bit small, exactly as it looks from the outside, and mostly empty. In fact, a lot of what Ianto can see is exposed beams from the warehouse’s ceiling and cement. 

Along one far wall is a set of large servers along with a massive generator that likely independently powers the warehouse, although Ianto cannot understand why it would need it. There is a scratched-up wooden desk tucked into a corner with an older computer monitor. The oddest thing of all, about the warehouse, is the ominous, hulking black machine that resembles what Ianto imagines a MRI machine would look like. Just a bit to the machine’s right is a cold storage container, the kinds that used to be in the labs in Torchwood One.

Everything about the machine sets Ianto’s body on edge. Dread and fear clenches their icy fists around his heart, squeezing and squeezing until he’s trembling and lightheaded. It feels like a primal response, ingrained in his body since the moment he came into being.

With stiff legs, he approaches the machine until he’s inches away, but when he brings a hand to touch the smooth surface, his shoulder seizes up, warning bells chiming loudly in his head. Despite his best efforts, fighting the reluctance of his body, he cannot lay a finger on the machine. 

Instead, he heads towards the cold storage container, eyeing its glossy silver surface in which he can see his own warped reflection. His fingers tremble again when he reaches for the latch keeping it locked, but he can breathe easy and he drags his palm against its surface, watching the smudges he leaves behind. 

Ianto inhales sharply and thumbs the latch open. Nothing happens. The lid remains tightly sealed. He tries again, bracing his upper arms slightly when he lifts it, and is immediately blasted in the face with a sudden chill of air. He ducks away, coughing. The temperature of the interior of the container is much, _much_ colder than he anticipated. 

The inside of the cold storage container is divided into six separate sections of which three are empty. The other three contain small vials of red liquid that Ianto reckons would be viscous if he were to pour some out on his hand.

Missing memories, a secret warehouse, vials of blood...what had Yvonne been up to that Ianto didn’t know about? Or did he know and Yvonne wiped it away?

Ianto reaches for a vial of blood from the first section and rolls the cold surface against his palm until he finds the label - _T. Pierce_ . Carefully, he reaches for a vial from the next section. This label reads _Y. Hartman._

There is one section full of vials of blood left. Ianto’s fingers nearly slip against the slippery glass. He palms the vial, turning it to the side until he can numbly read the label - _I. Jones._

All the vials he tediously checks are labelled with his name. They are all full of his blood, blood he doesn’t remember being taken. Unless Yvonne stole some of his samples from the Torchwood One labs.

He wouldn’t put it past her.

This goes beyond his memories. Pieces are falling into place faster than he wants, faster than he can make sense of, but something’s still missing. And it has something to do with the machine.

Every cell in Ianto’s body screams in protest, in fear, as he approaches the machine. He inches forward despite the knot tightening in his chest. He imagines Jack standing behind him, a warm beacon. Jack always gives Ianto confidence, makes him feel like he’s capable of anything. He imagines Jack urging him on, which gives him enough strength to press his fingers against the smooth, glossy surface of the machine. He shudders; it feels like someone is reaching underneath his skin; with Jack behind him, he rounds the corner of the machine to its side to its controls and flips the power switch.

With a series of bone-chilling beeps and whirrs, the machine hums to life before stilling against. The control panel lights up, illuminating a cylindrical slot to the side of the machine, where a patient would lie for a MRI. Ianto imagines that’s where the vial of blood goes.

Carefully, Ianto thumbs through the machine’s controller log, but there isn’t much to see. It was used formally only once or twice, the last date in those few days before Ianto left London, at the same time Yvonne accessed the warehouse.

_This is all a big coincidence,_ the Jack behind Ianto offers. Ianto turns to his phantom and finds him wearing that big, damn charming grin he sees so much on Jack, but this is the one Jack uses to talk to victims and witnesses with. The _oh, ma’am, your husband was attacked by a large dog, no matter what he remembers, we’ll take care of that_ and _yes, that was just a trick of light, here let me make you some tea_ smile. The one that Jack wears to lie.

Yes, Ianto is sure it’s all one damn big coincidence.

Ianto’s hands are steady when he flips the power switch off with a bit more force than should have been used, but he doesn’t care if he damages the machine. It’s done enough damage.

He stalks across the warehouse to the computer and drops into the squeaky chair before it. He imagines how the last person to sit here was likely Yvonne, and he’s surprised when he doesn’t feel anger, only a sort of numb resignation. 

He types in Yvonne’s passcode to the computer and logs in. There is only one program installed, and he guides the mouse and clicks on the icon, watching as the familiar Torchwood logo appears. 

There are a few files. Early notes are typed up by Tommy, explaining how he and a few of his team fixed up the machine. All of them but Tommy were Retconned, of course. There’s also a few reports describing the testing of the machine, mainly on mice but also on one unnamed human subject. The reports read all attempts as a success. Yvonne’s signed off on all of them. She’s in the files too, emailing back-and-forth with Tommy about the results.

Those files are all from very early on in Yvonne’s stint as director of the Torchwood Institute. Several years later, there is one file, with Yvonne’s name all over it. In fact, she’s the one who typed it up.

It reads:

_I personally oversaw the infiltration of Blind Summit. Civilian Ianto Jones was chosen and incentivized via his father to pose as a volunteer and, despite my best efforts, was injected with a dose of Excellium, the nanogene formula stolen from Torchwood One. Jones survived, but I entered the research firm myself and confronted my former PA Matthew and his lover, the head of Blind Summit, Pascal Babich. While I was indisposed with Matthew, Jones resourcefully issued a Code Black, and eventually, Tommy Pierce arrived on the scene with reinforcements and raised Blind Summit. Babich was unfortunately beheaded, and Matthew was trapped in the building when we demolished it._

_Tommy and I were by Jones’s side when he first collapsed. The Excellium burned through his body, and he died instantly. I knew that Jones’s potential as a major asset for Torchwood One and for me. We brought Jones’s body to this facility, and since it was still within an hour of his death, we were able to draw several samples of his blood, which are now stored on-site. The first sample was used in the machine, and Ianto Jones was successfully replicated. The original body was disposed of._

Ianto glances at the computer screen, uncomprehending, the crisp lines of the typed black text blurring against the bright screen. _The original body was disposed of._ But Ianto had a body. He was standing right here beneath the cold white lights of the warehouse, cement beneath his feet, looking down at his hands, fair hair dusting the backs, knuckles pale where they gripped the edges of the wooden desk, splinters digging into the smooth skin. Which means that-

Ianto Jones isn’t Ianto Jones. Ianto Jones is a replica. Nothing but a carbon-paper copy of a man whose body had long been rotting in the ground.

* * *

Mind blank and body heavy, Ianto finds himself climbing up to the cliff top without giving it much thought. Wisps of green grass and weeds crunch beneath his trainers as he stalks forward, approaching the scraggly edge that precedes the sheer death drop to the sandy beach below. Beyond the beach, the azure waters of the ocean stretch on for kilometers. Up here, in the meadow around Ianto, there is no one visible as far as his naked eye can see.

Three years ago, he and Lisa came camping here. They set up their tent on the beach and built a bonfire there at night. In the morning, they hiked up to this cliff top to watch the sunrise, breaking over the horizon and gilding them with a faint layer of gold. Cliche though it was, Ianto had thought that Lisa’d never looked so beautiful than in the early morning sun, and his resolve to propose had strengthened, but he hadn’t even begun to window shop for rings before Lisa was gone, along with Yvonne and the rest of Torchwood One.

The irony is, Ianto knows that if he’d asked her, Yvonne would have found him the best jewelers in London and booked him appointments and commented on the design of the ring. Ianto used to think that it was her way of showing she cared, by throwing money at him and trying to help him with Lisa and doing him favors, but Ianto now knows that he was wrong. Oh, Yvonne probably did care and did want to help, but in the end, it was her way of controlling him further, of keeping the life she’d literally helped create in her hands.

Oh, she must have thought him a fool.

Out of the numbness and bitterness comes one coherent thought - _I died._

_I died,_ realizes Ianto. _I died, and I didn’t even know it. I died, and Yvonne played god and brought me back._

And another: _There are more parallels between me and Jack than I’d originally realized. Death doesn’t seem to be a permanent barrier for us._

Then, in the pit of the aching emptiness he’s been feeling rises a tangle of dark, mangled emotions that he can barely give names to. Grief, betrayal, shock, disgust, it all blurs together, amalgamates into this blinding rage that fills every crevice in his body, slithers in between the cells that he now knows are recycled, until he’s choking on it. 

The anguished scream rips from his throat before he realizes it and continues endlessly, echoing hollowly against the open air and ocean, until he’s screamed himself hoarse. 

Exhausted, he falls to his knees and realizes that the clifftop is blurring like ruined watercolor into the sky. When he raises a rough hand to his face, it comes away damp with tears he hadn’t even realized he’d been crying.

“Why did you do it, Yvonne?” Ianto chokes out in between sobs, doubled over, chest heaving. “Who gave you permission to play god?”

Briefly, he wonders if this is how Jack felt the first time he came back to life, but Ianto drives that thought away. No comparisons can be made between him and Jack. Ianto isn’t human. He isn’t a man. He’s just a... _thing._ Ianto Jones isn’t even Ianto Jones.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” an even, kind voice says. “Of course you’re a man.” 

It comes from behind Ianto, and when he whips his head around, he finds that the voice belongs to Lisa Hallett.

She stands against the brilliant sky, tall and regal as she had been in life, before the Cyberwoman. Her dark eyes glint with mischief, and she looks every bit human, every bit alive. 

“Lisa,” Ianto gasps, staggering to his feet. “You’re alive!”

“No, of course not, silly!” Her lovely lips quirk into a slight smile, which Ianto’s too shocked to return. “Sorry, still dead.” The corners of her eyes crinkle teasingly in a way that’s so achingly familiar that Ianto has to look away. “I’m just in your mind.”

“Great,” he murmurs to his feet. “Not only am I a clone, but now I’m losing my mind.”

“Ianto Jones,” Lisa chastises, hands braced on her hips, “you’re just being ridiculous. You have an impeccable mind. Granted, yes, it has made some poor decisions, like agreeing to a date with your boss.” This last bit is said playfully. “You should have made Jack work a bit more to earn your forgiveness, but you’re happy all the same. No, you’re not losing your faculties, Ianto.”

“I summoned my dead girlfriend to give me a pep talk,” Ianto points out, his voice sounding petulant now to his own ears. He swipes his sleeve across his face, drying some of his tears. 

In response, Lisa rolls her eyes. “You’ve discovered something that calls into doubt everything you thought you knew. I think you’re entitled to some dramatics.”

Ianto snorts bitterly. “Are you my id, then? Here to point out that I’m a real human being because I can think and breathe and feel?”

Lisa just looks at him, her eyes calm and glittering.

A beat. “Because I think science would say otherwise,” Ianto forges on. “Did you know that they have technology that can mimic the actions of the brain, something about artificial neural pathways? Tosh and Owen find it fascinating, an intersection between technology and biology.”

“You never liked Freud,” Lisa tells him, striding forward. Ianto braces himself for contact, but she’s just a phantom, a figment of his imagination. He’ll never be able to brush his fingers against her soft skin, no matter how much he’d like to. “And if anything, I’m more like your ego, here to think about this rationally.” She lifts her head, levelling him with a challenging stare. “But let’s take your approach first. I’m part of your mind. I know everything that you do, and we both know that research has been unable to generate actual emotions and feelings. Sure, technology like that probably exists somewhere out there in this universe, but it isn’t of this world and thus doesn’t affect the definition of what it is to be human.”

“And what is the definition of what it means to be human?” whispers Ianto. “Tell me what it _means,_ because I’ve seen so many kinds of humans while working at Torchwood and there’s kinds of darkness in them that no one could even dream up.” He laughs, a jagged, bitter, ugly sound, but Lisa’s smile doesn’t waver. He only gets angrier. “ _Tell me!_ ”

“Being human means _feeling,_ like you said.” Lisa brushes past Ianto, and he still flinches as she strides towards the precipice before whirling on her heel to face him, arms crossed over her chest. “Being human means _falling in love._ You died and were brought back, and then you fell in love with me. You loved me enough to risk the world for me.” There is only gratitude and grief shadowed in her eyes, which deepens as she says: “You fell in love with Jack.”

“I don’t…” Ianto begins, but then he stops and thinks.

He thinks about Jack, broad-shouldered and solid, greatcoat flapping behind him as he perches on a rooftop. Jack’s blue eyes, bluer than the ocean behind Lisa, glowing with mirth as he tosses his head back and laughs, telling some lewd joke or story about a past sexploit. Jack, teeth gritted and mouth drawn in a snarl, as he barges in a nest of Weevils, Webley lifted high. Jack’s smile, bright and brilliant, in the sunlight that streams through the gap in the curtains in Ianto’s bedroom. Jack, sleeping with his head nestled on Ianto’s chest, as Ianto watches the mouth-shaped bruises he left last night fade from Jack’s skin.

_Fuck._ Ianto loves him. He knows this. He loves Jack Harkness, but the world will come to a literal end before he tells him this. And it’s the early kind of love, infatuation. Ianto still has a long way to fall for Jack.

“Yes, I love Jack,” he admits to Lisa, trading one love of his life for another.

The smooth skin around Lisa’s gorgeous eyes crinkles as she smiles broadly, head lifted high. Ianto doesn’t think he’s ever loved her more, and he laughs at the irony of him loving a phantom and a man who can never die. “And by your own logic, if you love, you feel, and if you feel, you are human,” says Lisa. “You are human, Ianto Jones.”

Backed into a corner by his own rationale, he agrees, “Fine. I’m human...but I’m not Ianto Jones.”

Lisa’s sculpted eyebrows rise high. “Every single cell in your body belonged to Ianto Jones. You have his DNA, his memories, as incomplete as they are, his personality. You are, in every way, Ianto Jones.”

“I’m not,” Ianto argues back, face screwing in anguish. He turns and begins to pace furiously along the cliff top. “I’m not real, a pale copy of the original.” _A knockoff with false memories and a programmed personality._

“And you accuse Jack of being dramatic,” Lisa tells him. “Surely you see the irony in this?” When Ianto doesn’t respond, she sighs, clicking her tongue. “Ianto, Ianto, Ianto. Think of how much you’ve changed since I met you, since you joined Torchwood Three alone. You were always a good man, but you became a better one.” She cocks her head. “You forgave Jack, saved his life. You saved Toshiko’s life. In fact, you’ve saved so many lives and helped save the world more times than I can count.”

“But what does that make me, Lisa?” he protests. “If I’ve changed? I’m clearly not the original Ianto Jones if I am Ianto Jones. Where does that leave me?”

“There was a philosopher you read once, when you first started at Torchwood One, in the hopes of appearing cultured,” begins Lisa, smirking slightly. At Ianto’s puzzled look: “I’m a part of your mind, silly. I know everything you know.”

“Go on,” he replies. “Tell me what I already know.”

“Smart arse.” She winks playfully at him. “That philosopher pondered about personal identity, that if your mind was placed in a stranger’s body, would you be yourself in a stranger’s body or a new person entirely?”

“And what did this philosopher conclude?” Ianto asks, gazing out at the horizon, eyes straying briefly over Lisa. 

“If your mind was placed in a stranger’s body, you would still be yourself, because you would have the same memories, the same experiences,” Lisa says, “but the moment you tried something new, experienced something different, in this stranger’s body, you would become something else. A third person who is neither you nor the stranger, a new person, a new man.” She glances pointedly at him. “After you were cloned, briefly, you were a cloned version of Ianto Jones, but when you returned to Cardiff and joined the museum, you had new experiences, formed new memories. You became a new man, a new version of Ianto Jones.” She smiles at him. “You’re an entirely different person.”

Torchwood One Ianto Jones was young, shy, inexperienced. He followed Yvonne’s orders precisely until he gained enough confidence to develop a bit of a backbone. Those suits eventually grew to be more of a second skin; his coffee skills improved, refined. 

Ianto Jones at Torchwood Three was someone different. Initially, he presented himself as a pale shadow of who he’d been at Canary Wharf to fade into the background, escape Jack’s attention, but he soon found that he liked that attention. He flirted back, found his way into Jack’s bed, fell for the man. A younger Ianto definitely would not have been able to stand Owen, would have melted in the shadow of the team.

“You’re right,” Ianto says softly, acceptingly, the torment that had been raging in his mind reaching a tenuous calm. “I am someone new, someone different. A new version of Ianto Jones.”

Not the original but no longer just a clone. He’s somewhere in between.

“Is that enough for you, Ianto?” Lisa asks. “Is having Jack and Torchwood Three enough for you?”

Ianto turns, placing his back to the ocean, to Lisa, and inhales sharply. “It is.” He nods. “It will be.”

A heavy weight lifts from his chest and shoulders, and suddenly, he can breath more easily. He strides away from the cliff top, towards his Audi, not bothering looking back. Lisa won’t be there; she was never there. But Ianto is. And Jack is too. 

That’s enough for Ianto.

* * *

After getting delayed by an hour in the traffic approaching London, Ianto briefly returns to the warehouse and secures it. He doesn’t think he’s done with it yet.

Then Ianto drives back to the hotel and packs up his overnight bag - crumpled suit, clothing he never wore, and all - before placing his gun on the top and zipping the bag up. He thoroughly cleans and neatens the hotel room until he’s effectively removed almost any trace of himself and scans it once just to be sure. It isn’t perfect, but hopefully, the hotel’s housekeeping will take care of anything he’s missed.

Ianto smiles politely to the pretty receptionist when he requests to checkout. “Family emergency,” he explains, even though she didn’t ask why he’s checking out two days early and nods politely when she offers her condolences. 

He may be in a rush, but he also hasn’t eaten in several long hours and he’s only human, he reckons, so he visits a pub across the street from the hotel and pays the exorbitant tourist-trap fee for his burger. It’s seasoned poorly, and he grimaces as he swallows his last bite and washes it down with his bottle of water, but it should keep him going for another few hours.

Smoothing down his leather jacket, Ianto makes a quick stop at the loo before returning to the hotel car park. He places his overnight bag in the boot of his Audi and reverses out of the car park until he’s back on the street level, only to immediately become ensnared in London traffic. _Again._

After twenty minutes of sitting still and drumming his thumbs idly against the steering wheel, Ianto realizes that he won’t be going anywhere for awhile, cursing his stupidity at trying to leave London in peak rush hour. He leans over to the compartment between the front seats and fishes out a random CD case only to turn it over and groan when he discovers it to be the ABBA album that Jack once bought him as a joke after hearing his rant about the band; ironically, Jack gets a lot of mileage out of the album when he and Ianto are stuck in a Cardiff traffic jam. Ianto pops the CD into the player in his Audi and continues drumming his fingers to the beat of Waterloo and - regrettably - Dancing Queen.

It takes Ianto another hour and some odd minutes to navigate his way out of the city, by which point he’s completed listening to the ABBA album and is half-way through the track listings of a big band compilation that Jack’s left behind. Ianto amuses himself by realizing that he knows most of the songs because of Jack and eventually even finds himself singing along to a few.

The things traffic and boredom will do to a person… Ianto will have the earworm of Dancing Queen stuck in his head until Cardiff. In fact, he catches himself humming it a bit later on and instantly scowls, but there’s no one around to complain to. His Lisa hallucination is surely not popping up again.

By the time he hits the emptier motorways outside in London, he manages to drive for another hour before he’s forced to fill up on gas for the third time since he left Cardiff, which is also when he takes a quick stretch break. It’s around late evening now, nearing the actual night, so he drives furiously the stretch of the last hour to Cardiff, getting caught in brief bouts of traffic once or twice along the way.

It’s an hour to midnight when Ianto finally enters the city, shoulders slumping as he heaves a sigh. He’s seen the inside of his Audi far too much today, and he can’t wait until he can finally step inside his flat. At this time, unless there’s been a late Weevil call or other sudden attack, which is unlikely considering that the city hasn’t fallen to shambles, Jack should be either on a rooftop somewhere or in his bunker, so Ianto drives towards his flat, parks outside his building, pulls his overnight bag from the boot, and takes the stairs to his floor. His keys jingle quietly as he unlocks his flat door and nearly trips inside in his exhaustion. He drops his bag by the door - it’s his problem to deal with tomorrow - and kicks his trainers off, gaze travelling lazily over the mess he’s created. Without turning on the lights, he washes his hands in the kitchen sink and drinks a quick glass of water before wobbling towards his bedroom. 

Ianto feels so dead - he winces at his poor choice of words - that he’ll likely just strip naked and crawl into bed, but he stiffens when he pushes his bedroom door open and finds a man slumbering in his bed, illuminated by the faint moonlight. Quickly, however, he recognizes the stranger as Jack, which is only further confirmed when Jack snores loudly. Ianto smiles at the familiarity.

_I guess my flat is better than a bunker,_ he muses but does indeed make a note of remembering to ask Jack about it tomorrow. 

Carefully, in the darkness, he strips off his clothes until he’s just wearing his pants and bundles them into the laundry hamper before making his way to his slide of the bed. Quietly, he lifts the blanket and sheet and inwardly cheers when he slides noiselessly into bed, muscles relaxing into the softness and warmth.

His celebration is short-lived. Jack shifts, the blankets rustling with his movements, and rolls over to face Ianto, a heavy eyelid creeping up to reveal a sliver of Jack’s eyes. “ _Ianto?_ ” he asks groggily, Ianto’s name and Jack’s next words coming out as a mouthful of slurred syllables. “What are you doing here? Thought you were still at your sister’s?”

A freight train of emotions hits Ianto - overwhelming adoration, gratitude, sorrow, guilt, and he blinks back sudden tears, swallows down the lump in his throat. He reaches a gentle hand to cup Jack’s cheek and leans in to kiss him deeply, wondering if Jack can sense that something has changed for Ianto, that love has come into the picture, but Jack only blinks sleepily back at Ianto.

_Jack can never know the truth,_ Ianto decides again, because as much as Jack needs him, he needs Jack, and as much as he wants to believe that the truth won’t change anything between them, he can’t be sure. Besides, what does it matter? He’s Ianto Jones, and he loves Jack Harkness. It is simple as that.

“Ianto?” Jack prompts, sounding a bit more awake, and Ianto suddenly realizes that he’s been lost in thought for the last few minutes and still hasn’t replied.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, yawning. “It’s been a long day. I chased David and Mica around for hours, but then Johnny came back early and Rhi told me to go home. Not before insisting that I stay late for dinner, of course. That’s why I’m late.” Belatedly, he realizes that his cell phone is still hidden underneath the floorboard. “If I missed any of your phone calls, I’m quite sorry, but I was busy for most of the day. Didn’t have time to check my phone. In fact, I’m not even sure where it is right now.” He offers Jack a warm, tired smile. “Sorry for waking you.”

Jack also yawns, nuzzling closer to Ianto. “Don’t worry about it. I knew better than to disturb you while you were away.” Briefly, Ianto feels a quick stab of relief. “Besides, practically nothing happened with the Rift today. Owen spent some time bitching about Weevils, and Gwen and Tosh played poker before I shooed all of them away. We all went for an early dinner. We missed you.”

_I missed you,_ he says, and Ianto hears it.

“I missed them too,” he replies. “Newport isn’t the most nostalgic of places.” Nor is London. When Jack yawns again: “We should get to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack reaches a possessive arm to Ianto and pulls him to his chest, which is when Ianto discovers that Jack is actually completely naked in his bed. In other circumstances, Ianto would have found that exciting, but both men are completely exhausted, so Ianto barely has enough sense of mind to tuck his head against the crook of Jack’s shoulder and throw a leg over his hip before he’s drifting off to sleep. 

_I love you,_ he thinks but knows it’ll be eons before he admits it to Jack, if he ever does.

For once, Ianto is able to get a full night of sleep and only rouses once the sunlight poking through the constant gap in his curtains becomes unbearably bright. Then he groans, buries his face in his pillow, and reaches for Jack only to find that Jack has disappeared. His warmth still lingers in the bed, and there’s a fading indent of his head in his pillow. Faintly, if Ianto strains his ears, he can hear someone rustling around in the kitchen, accidentally loudly clattering pots and pans and then swearing.

Smiling, Ianto stretches in bed and then rolls to his feet, shuffling around his bedroom to clear up a bit of the clutter Jack has left behind before making the bed. He feels just a bit gleeful as he smooths down the wrinkled sheets and is grateful Owen isn’t around to take a dig at him.

He debates whether or not to shower, then realizes that he’s feeling pretty disgusting from yesterday. Thus, he showers and dresses in a neat suit, feeling a bit closer to normal. 

The old Ianto Jones, the pre-Torchwood one, the one who hadn’t died, didn’t wear suits. _This_ Ianto Jones, the man who was reborn, this post-Torchwood one, does wear them; it’s part of the fabric of his reality, of his identity.

A clothed Jack glances up and smiles when Ianto enters the kitchen, not questioning the suit. He does, however, lift an eyebrow. “You showered without me?” He’s bearing a plate of waffles, which he deposits on the dining table. “I was looking forward to joining you.” He then proceeds to waggle his eyebrows suggestively. 

“I had a long day yesterday. I wanted to feel fresh this morning,” Ianto offers, rolling his eyes and pressing a kiss to the side of Jack’s mouth. Swiftly, Jack latches onto his wrist and pulls him in for a longer, deeper kiss until they’re basically snogging against a kitchen counter. When they break apart for air, Ianto sneaks from Jack’s grip and watches the other man pout. As he stabs his waffles with a fork, he feels a stab of affection for the immortal. 

_I love you,_ he thinks again and feels a shiver run down his spine. He wonders how long until saying those three little words to himself will become old, but then again, it never did with Lisa.

Instead, Ianto swallows his mouthful of waffle and raises his head to find Jack’s expectant gaze. Ianto nods. “Not raw, not salty,” he begins, cocking his head. “In fact, I’d say this is the closest you’ve gotten to an actual waffle so far.”

“But still not perfect,” Jack surmises, expression a bit dismayed.

“One more attempt ought to do it,” Ianto tells him, and Jack’s shoulders lift as he takes a seat opposite Ianto and digs into his own plate, eyes narrowed as he takes a bite of his creation.

“Yeah, okay, I can taste it,” says Jack. “Could use just a pinch more of sugar.” Then he smirks. “On the upside, it allows me to do this.” And then, Ianto’s forced to watch Jack drown his waffles in maple syrup. 

“You’re showering before you kiss me next,” Ianto warns him, and Jack rolls his eyes. 

When Jack goes to shower, Ianto washes their plates in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher and tidies the kitchen until the counter is gleaming. Luckily, Jack takes a while to get ready - it’s likely all the preening he does in the bathroom mirror, Ianto supposes, so Ianto has another ten minutes to retrieve his cell phone from the floor, deal with his overnight bag, and settle on the couch watching the news when Jack emerges into the living room in a new blue shirt and trousers, along with with the black waistcoat Ianto loves so much instead of braces. His hair is damp, and so is the collar of his shirt.

“I found my phone,” Ianto says, waving the device at Jack, who nods. 

“What do you want to do today?” Jack asks. “It’s almost mid-day, so we could continue with your Bondathon or…” He shrugs.

“I wouldn’t mind wandering around the city a bit,” offers Ianto. “It’s a nice day, and we rarely have this kind of time.”

The Plass is sunny and warm for once, so they stroll along Cardiff Bay for an hour, enjoying the sunlight, their shoulders and hands occasionally brushing. Jack has left his greatcoat behind, so they’re less recognizable, but that doesn’t keep them from receiving a few curious looks about what Torchwood is doing out and about, which surprisingly doesn’t affect Ianto’s good mood at all.

“What’s got you smiling all of a sudden?” Jack teases as he pulls Ianto down on a bench next to him. 

“Nothing,” replies Ianto, but his wide smile doesn’t waver. “Nice day, good company...that’s about it.” He peeks quickly at Jack only to find that the other man’s eyes are bright and happy, but it’s like staring straight at the sun, Jack’s sheer presence briefly too much, so Ianto returns to watching the Plass. A seagull swoops towards an unsuspecting tourist and swipes away their fish and chips, which sends both Jack and Ianto into quiet peals of laughter.

“Be alien or human, tourists never learn,” Jack comments, and Ianto smirks. “Weirdly enough, seagulls survive for a while. There’s actually an evolved species of them in the forty-seventh century, but they died out before my time.”

Ianto allows Jack’s explanation of these so-called “spacegulls,” a name that Ianto approves of for its sheer straightforwardness, wash over him as he shifts the tiniest bit closer to Jack on the bench, their knees bumping together. Jack smiles warmly at him.

“Do you want ice cream?” Ianto asks suddenly, cutting off Jack mid-sentence about the time a Rift flare accidentally drove seagulls in Cardiff mad enough to divebomb several Weevils. It’s actually a quite amusing tale, and he thinks he’ll ask Jack to continue it later.

Jack nods. “Why not? I’m craving some chocolate.”

Together, they walk towards an ice cream parlor the team often frequents and purchase one cone of chocolate ice cream. Ianto has about two licks before he remembers why he doesn’t actually like ice cream and allows Jack to devour the rest as Ianto successfully fends off a headache. 

Half an hour later, Jack pulls Ianto into a Top Shop. “It’s been a while since I came here,” he says, beaming, and leaves Ianto to wonder when Jack, a man who wears a period-typical military greatcoat with braces and a belt, could have possibly been shopping for at Top Shop.

When he asks Jack, Jack only smiles mysteriously, but they leave the store with a brand-new leather jacket for Jack and a new pair of jeans that Jack urges Ianto to try on that looks eerily similar to the denim Ianto was wearing when he attacked that Weevil in Bute Park. Ianto rolls his eyes when Jack leers at him in his new jeans in the fitting room. 

“Predictable,” Ianto murmurs affectionately as they return to the Plass, and Jack pretends not to hear him.

“Lunch?” Jack asks about an hour later while they wander in and out of different shops just for curiosity’s sake. It’s the kind of idle time Ianto would typically despise, but with Jack by his side, he’s actually having fun. 

“Jack, it’s three in the afternoon,” Ianto points out, but Jack shrugs. Ianto sighs. “Sure, I could eat.”

They enter a sandwich shop the team also frequents and are greeted with a wide smile and a loud “So should I be worried about aliens here, then?” from the owner.

“You’ve been watching too much telly, Huw,” Ianto responds with a quirked eyebrow, voice dry, but he makes a note to be more thorough with their Retconning. That thought sends a severe chill through his body, and he inhales sharply, which Jack notices and steps closer, nudging Ianto gently with a questioning expression. “He visits the tourist office sometimes” is all that Ianto offers as an explanation.

It’s likely he’ll never get those memories back, Ianto realizes as they collect their order, but at this point, he isn’t even sure if he wants to remember what Yvonne wiped away. Yes, his trust in her is heavily swayed now, and he doesn’t know if it’ll ever completely recover, but Yvonne likely had good reason beyond her own manipulations to Retcon him. Ianto’s decided to let those missing memories lie with the dead and has made his peace with it, even if making his peace with Yvonne will take even longer.

They eat their sandwiches on a bench out on the Plass, watching the citizens of Cardiff and tourists alike mill around, enjoying the fading sunlight. 

“I meant to ask,” Jack begins. “How was your visit with your sister?”

“It was alright,” Ianto offers, balling up his trash along with Jack’s. “We reminisced a little, but we’re not really the type of siblings to do so. Spent more time putting the house in order.”

Jack raises a curious eyebrow. “Rhiannon made you?”

“I offered,” replies Ianto, and Jack throws back his head and laughs. It’s a handsome sound that warms Ianto from the inside out; he wishes to bottle it for those cold days where Jack isn’t there. He certainly could have used it for the three months that Jack was gone. Ianto knows that Jack’s absence was a lot longer than three months for Jack, but he still won’t really explain the new demons that haunt his eyes or the nightmares that leave him screaming at night occasionally. 

_I love you,_ he thinks, watching Jack smile.

Ten minutes later, after discarding their trash and wanting to make it home before the sun darkens completely, they stroll one last time around the wharf. 

“Do you ever wonder where you would be if you hadn’t made certain decisions in your life?” Ianto begins, all too casual for the thoughts flurrying around his head. 

Jack cocks his head, looking pensive. “Oh, too many times,” he says finally. “Sometimes, I think about where I would have been if I hadn’t joined the Time Agency. Or if I hadn’t met the Doctor…”

“And?”

Ianto finds himself pulled close to Jack. The other man is respectful enough of Ianto’s need for privacy that he peeks around to ensure that there are no onlookers before he sneaks a quick, sweet kiss to Ianto’s mouth. 

“I’m right where I want to be right now,” admits Jack. “You, Gwen, Tosh, Owen, Torchwood...you’re all I need right now.”

Jack’s words strike Ianto right in the heart, an arrow to its target, and he feels unbelievable warmth spread through his body. He ducks his head, blushing and trying to hide his uncontrollable smile. 

“I’m exactly where I need to be, too,” Ianto admits back to Jack, “right by your side, as always.” Right where he wants to stay forever, if he has the choice.

He’s Ianto Jones, he loves Jack Harkness, and nothing else in the world matters.

* * *

**Epilogue:**

It feels like someone’s carved out half of Jack’s heart, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get it back.

He’s been feeling this same _aching_ numbness every day for the past month since the love of his goddamned long life died in his arms - and yes, he knows that eventually enough time will pass, and he will fall for someone again, that there will be many loves of his life for the rest of eternity, that he’s in fact had a few already, but that’s what scares him, that one day, he will look up from somewhere in the universe and will have forgotten everything about Ianto Jones, the way his lips tasted, the way he sounded, how goddamned _beautiful_ he was, and that’s when Ianto will die his second and final death.

That’s the curse of being loved by an immortal man; he may try and promise you immortality, but you will only live as long as his memory does.

( _A thousand year’s time you won’t remember me,_ Ianto sobs, wide, blue eyes glazed over with tears as he gazes up at Jack. The warmth is fading from his skin, so Jack tugs him closer, _clings_ to him as tightly as he can, as if through sheer willpower and impossibility alone that Jack can pull him back from death’s greedy grasp. 

_Yes, I will,_ replies Jack. _I promise. I will._ He will ensure that in a thousand years, every human, every alien, and everyone alike knows the tale of Ianto Jones, the man who could love monsters, but he won’t need to if only he can keep Ianto here, save him. They were supposed to have more time. But the wonderful light is quickly dimming from Ianto’s eyes. _Ianto. Ianto? Don’t go._ Jack hunches over his body and sobs, pleads, begs, with not even a shadow of the bluster he’d held only moments previous. What is the use of trying to save the world if he can’t even save one man, the man he loves? 

It’s not a sudden realization. He’s known it for quite some time now, that he loves Ianto Jones; every atom of Jack, body, mind, and soul, is deeply lost for this man. But he thought they’d have more time.

_Don’t leave me, please. Please don’t._ )

_We were supposed to have more time,_ thinks Jack, hands balling into fists by his side as he stands on the tall hill that overlooks the grassy cemetery with its weathered tombstones and shady trees. His fists fall slack as he remembers Ianto’s last gasping breath, the enormity of the _love_ in his eyes.

Jack had been lucky enough to have been loved by a man like Ianto Jones, and he’d been the architect of his own, and Ianto’s, destruction.

Down in the cemetery is a crowd of unlikely mourners gathered around a brand-new grave that contains a body who only weeks earlier had waltzed with Jack in his office, who had pinned him down and snogged him breathless. 

A tall woman is nestled into the side of a stocky man, her hair falling in a straight dark sheet down her back, and it’s only years of familiarity with her that allows Jack to accurately picture Gwen’s green doe eyes glazed over with a sheen of tears, her pretty face warped in grief. Rhys tugs an arm tighter around her. Both are dressed in black - Gwen in the elegant dress that she’d worn at the memorial service Tosh’s family had hosted, Rhys in a neat suit. Jack wonders how long it took her to debate how appropriate it would be for Rhys to wear a suit to the funeral before settling on that Ianto would have appreciated it.

Gwen had considered Ianto her younger brother, she’d once admitted to Jack a rare afternoon where Ianto had been away from the Hub picking up lunch.

A shorter, plumper dark-haired woman stands across from Gwen, and Jack presumes her to be Rhiannon, the sister who Ianto had mentioned and visited occasionally in their time together. She too is nestled into the side of a fair-haired man - Johnny, likely - with two subdued children pressed into their legs. David and Mica, the children must be. Jack had heard much about them for all that he never saw them. Ianto hadn’t been one to admit it, but he had loved the only family he’d had left.

Then there’s Martha Jones and Mickey Smith, or rather Martha Smith-Jones and Mickey Smith, standing hand-in-hand directly opposite the tombstone. Martha had considered Ianto a close friend, and Mickey had come to bond with him as well. The last time all five of them - Torchwood plus Martha and Mickey - had been gathered had been the wedding. That was also the last time either of them had seen Ianto alive.

Jack snorts bitterly, carelessly swiping his tears away with the sleeve of his greatcoat, but then he stiffens, slowly dropping his arm. This greatcoat was the last gift he ever received from Ianto; it has to survive for as long as it can. Jack has to treat it well, cherish it, worship it, far more than he did his time with Ianto Jones.

The grief feels like a sword that’s been run through his heart, a feeling that Jack is unfortunately well-acquainted with from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and blood from the wound floods every single crevice in his body. Jack’s spent the last several weeks - when he wasn’t helping Gwen and UNIT with the Hub’s cleanup, that is - sloppily drunk in a motel, unable to face returning home, to the flat that he and Ianto had last spent a lazy morning in before being wrenched away by an emergency at the hospital.

If Jack could go back to that morning, if his vortex manipulator still worked, and _Christ_ does he hate the Doctor right now, he would. If he could have captured that moment of time in a bottle, he would have done just that. 

Colorful autumnal leaves and dry weeds crunch beneath his brown boots as Jack turns to disappear into the shadow of the trees, but at that particular moment, Rhiannon Davies chooses to glance _up,_ right towards him, and Jack doesn’t need binoculars to know that her blue eyes, the same eyes as Ianto, have widened in surprise and shock. She yells something indecipherable, pushing her husband away, and like a coward, Jack turns tail and flees.

Unfortunately for Jack, the cemetery where Ianto is now buried is also where his parents and aunts and uncles and some of his grandparents are buried. He and Rhiannon grew up visiting and exploring said cemetery while their parents mourned, so while Jack has the advantage of speed and a shorter route, crashing through the trees to reach his car, Rhiannon remembers the cemetery’s short-cuts well enough to appear outside the gate just as Jack stumbles onto the road. He’s still several meters away from Rhiannon, and they gaze at each other in shock, but then as Jack turns to run again, she yells, “ _Wait, stop!_ ” She sounds so much like Ianto that Jack stands rooted there and watches her stalk towards him.

“You’re him,” she says to him, eyes red-rimmed and still damp with tears, eye makeup smeared everywhere, lips pressed together tightly, when she’s only centimeters away. She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re Jack.”

He can only nod wordlessly, watching her eyes narrow as she sniffles.

“I want to talk to you,” she insists.

Jack nods again and coughs once, twice, before hoarsely saying, “I know somewhere we can go.”

* * *

To anyone else, they make an odd pairing, a handsome man with an old-fashioned coat slung over the back of his chair, sleeves rolled up as he sips at his beer, and the short, pretty woman in a black dress fit for a funeral who clutches her own glass tightly, both anguished and hurting.

Ianto would have been horrified to see his sister and his lover sitting side-by-side in this pub the team used to frequent.

“You didn’t come down to the funeral,” notes Rhiannon quietly as she watches the happy crowd around them. It’s a Saturday, and couples are drinking, eating, or watching the rugby match on the telly on the wall. They hear loud cheers come from the crowd occasionally. “Mrs. Cooper-Williams seemed disappointed. I thought that of all people, his own boyfriend would be there.”

“I wasn’t his boyfriend,” Jack snaps and watches Rhiannon’s eyebrows rise high, He quickly smooths out his tone. Softly: “It wasn’t that. We never _settled_ on an actual word, but we weren’t boyfriends. It was _more_ than that. I loved him.”

Rhiannon bristles. “Odd way you have of showing it.”

Jack chokes on his next sip of his beer, coughing and rubbing his chest. “ _I led him to his death, Mrs. Davies,_ ” he hisses, and he knows that the tears have begun to flow again. “I smiled at him and then watched him die in my arms.”

Now, Rhiannon is also weeping silently. She sniffles, wiping snot from her nose with a rough paper napkin. If Ianto were here, he’d offer her his handkerchief, but that is the main problem, isn’t it, that Ianto is no longer here. “So he wasn’t a civil servant, then?”

Jack snorts bitterly. “Gwen already told you everything.” With Torchwood gone, with the country’s faith in their government so shaken, there was no need to keep Torchwood’s secrets any more. 

But Rhiannon shakes her head, shoulders slumped. “She didn’t tell me anything, just that you lot were more special ops than pencil pushers.”

“ _Oh._ ” For once, Jack is lost for words. He gestures futilely at the air, shoving his glass away. He’s had enough to drink. If alcohol could not drown out his evils and demons, the memories and nightmares where he led his lover like a goat to the slaughter and sacrificed his own grandson, then nothing likely will.

“I blame you,” Rhiannon says after a long silence. “I blame you for him, and I think I will for a long while. He was deliberate with his love and trust, but I saw the light shining in his eyes when he told me about you. He _loved_ you.” And those words are a familiar stab to Jack’s chest. “He loved you, and if you’d told him to stay, he would have listened.” And she’s right to blame him, and Jack parts his lips to tell her so, but then she inhales sharply, still sniffling. “But he might also not have.” She laughs wetly. “He was a stubborn bastard even as a kid. Never listened to me or Mum.”

Momentarily, Jack imagines it - a young Ianto Jones, chubby-cheeked and with those large blue eyes, bashful and blushing, quiet and shy but brimming with curiosity, and the aching inside him dulls slightly. 

“What was he like as a kid?” he whispers.

“Ianto?” Rhiannon asks, as if there’s anyone else Jack could be asking about, and he nods quickly. Her smile is sad but with a shadow of joy and nostalgia. “The quietest boy you could imagine. Very lonely. He made a few friends at school, but he would never invite any of them over or go to their houses. He always had his nose in a book. Once I caught him poking at my advanced textbooks.”

That startles a chuckle out of both of them, and Jack wears a slight smile for the first time in weeks, but grief catches back up to him. His smile quickly fades.

“He was a junior researcher before he came to me,” offers Jack. “He was in charge of our archives. He was the only one allowed down there; he was so _specific._ ” Then he remembers how all of Ianto’s efforts were for naught, that the archives no longer exist, blown up with the rest of the Hub, and he grits his teeth. “He helped me catch our office pet...that’s how he got the job. She’s gone now - we lost her, but her name had been Myfanwy. She was a...an exotic bird.”

Jack sincerely, _sincerely_ hopes that Myfanwy made it out of the Hub, that she flew away and is happy somewhere in the Welsh countryside with plenty of sheep to hunt. He and Gwen can’t be the only Torchwood survivors.

“A bird?” asks Rhiannon, expression skeptical.

“It was very impressive,” Jack replies, just a tad defensive. That day with Ianto in the warehouse is one of his most precious memories, and he won’t have it dulled by Rhiannon’s judgment. “Ianto used to joke that Myfanwy was a pteranodon.”

To his surprise, Rhiannon’s expression softens, and she snorts quietly. “He loved dinosaurs, had a stuffed dinosaur as a kid that he always carried...until one day Dad had had enough with Ianto behaving like a kid.” She shivers, voice quieting. “Dad was always too hard on him. But Ianto didn’t exactly make it easy either, but we could have tried. Mum and I could have _tried_ harder with him. We forced him to follow Dad to London. He didn’t want to. He was finally happier, and we forced him to go.” Her eyes are shadowed now, and she lifts her gaze to Jack. “When he was with you, with your team, was he happy?”

“Not in the beginning,” Jack says. “He was too fresh off...losing Lisa, and we also admittedly overlooked him. But he confronted us...and I started taking him out into the field more. He became more confident. Of course, there were more hurdles, but we fell together almost naturally.” He inhales sharply. “For a while, Ianto was the happiest I’d ever seen him. He had me, Gwen, our doctor Owen, and the most brilliant woman any of us had ever met - Toshiko. Then...it all fell apart. Owen was gravely injured, and he and Tosh eventually died saving Cardiff during the terrorist attacks. And then.” He shrugs. “But you need to know that Ianto saved many, many lives. He saved Cardiff more times than I can count, sometimes single-handedly.” 

“Just tell me one thing,” Rhiannon begins, her eyes, Ianto’s eyes, fixed intently on Jack. “You’ve already said it, but say it again. Did you love him?”

Jack nods furiously, his grip around the slippery wood of the pub table tightening. “Like anything.” The noises in the background fade to a staticky roar as he thinks of Ianto Jones. “I would have given up the world for him.” And he smiles darkly. “And I almost did…”

* * *

“Has someone cleared out his flat yet?” Rhiannon had asked, hands wringing together.

“Our flat,” Jack had corrected, then had shaken his head. “No, not yet. But I’m going to do it. It’s time…”

But when he unlocks the flat door with a jingle of the keys he’s had to have copied, eyes landing on the new handsome leather couch they’d bought recently, which is now toppled over, Jack knows he will not be able to.

Their flat is in a disarray, everything scattered and some things broken, and Ianto would have been horrified to find their home like this, so Jack moves quickly. He doesn’t want to stay here, with the broken, painful memories of his life with Ianto, any longer than he has to; it will all be Gwen’s problem soon.

He has one large rucksack to pack the last two years into. He starts in the kitchen, having enough decency to toss out the rotted food. There is some of Glenda Jones’s silverware in the cupboards, relatively undamaged, but that should go to Rhiannon. 

Rage boils uncontrollably in Jack when he finds the mismatched pair of mugs he and Ianto used for their coffee shattered on the tile next to the dining table, and he kicks the leg of a dining chair, swearing when it collapses to the ground.

He hopes Gwen and Martha take Johnson and her men down. 

There’s nothing in any of the other cupboards or in the supply closet, so Jack makes a list of all the Torchwood technology that they’d brought home missing from Ianto’s spare room, stolen from UNIT. Gwen will need resources for whatever she’s planned for Torchwood now, if anything.

In the living room, Jack finally places the first item in his rucksack - a framed photograph of the entire team, taken before Owen’s first death, where they are also smiling and alive. He adds in a rare photograph of him and Ianto that they hadn’t noticed Gwen take, both of them grinning like fools out on the Plass. He cannot resist also adding a picture of a young Ianto with his arm around Lisa as the couple sits on a bench somewhere in London. There is also a tightly-bound photo album Ianto kept on his bookshelf, but Jack leaves that for Rhiannon; it contains mostly photos from Ianto’s childhood, although Jack sneaks one of a toddler Ianto smiling gleefully.

He also leaves behind Ianto’s James Bond DVDs and many books. There are scarce few of Jack’s own possessions here; he’d been in the middle of moving in entirely for all that he mostly already lived here. Almost everything Jack owned blew up with the Hub.

Their bedroom is harder to sort. First, Jack gathers up all their sex toys, intent on burning them; this was only between him and Ianto, and despite how Gwen and the rest of the team had joked and speculated, no one else should be allowed into the privacy Ianto had so cherished. Then ignoring Ianto’s side of the closet, Jack packs away as many of his own clothes as he can into the rucksack but is eventually forced to distribute several of his trousers and shirts into Ianto’s favorite overnight bag. 

Ianto’s laptop is among the missing technology taken by Johnson’s men, but everything there had been connected to the Torchwood server, which Ianto had used to remotely wipe his laptop’s memory clean while they’d been on the run. Jack’s already downloaded all the contents that remained onto his vortex manipulator.

He fights his hardest to ignore the messy bed, sheets and pillows pooling on the floor, and succeeds, but he can’t forget how Ianto had felt in his arms that last morning, warm and drowsy and content. 

Jack shivers, blinking away tears, and turns to the nightstands, and comes away with Ianto’s beloved stopwatch, pocket watch - which in a momentary fit of grief, he turns over, hoping to find a familiar circular language carved there, and some of Lisa’s jewelry Ianto’d kept, but he doesn’t find Ianto’s diary, no matter how much he searches for it. 

From Ianto’s side of the closet, Jack takes a handful of his favorite of Ianto’s ties - the red one, a striped grey, a subtle blue, and a few more. He presses his nose to Ianto’s shirts, inhaling Ianto’s rich scent, but ultimately, he knows he can’t take them.

Finally, Jack slings his rucksack over his shoulder and lifts the overnight bag. He is half-way out the door when something suddenly occurs to him. He drops the bag to the ground and rushes to the couch, prying up the other loose floorboard, the one Ianto thought he didn’t know about.

And there it is, Ianto Jones’s diary, which Jack immediately places into his rucksack for safekeeping. He’ll look through it later, when he’s far away from his ghosts, but when he glances back, there’s something else tucked into the small space, a thick white envelope. 

Written on the back of the envelope, in Ianto’s messy, slanted scrawl, is _To Jack._

Jack drops to his knees, ripping the envelope open as neatly as he can, and hastily - but carefully - slides the single sheet of paper out. His eyes scan the letter frantically, and half-way through, tears well in his eyes before trailing down his cheeks. 

When he’s done, he gently folds the letter back into the envelope and tucks the entirety into the inside pocket of his greatcoat.

Then he doubles over, face buried in his hands, and sobs hysterically, shoulders shaking uncontrollably, chest heaving, every sudden gasp of breath watery and choked.

Jack Harkness weeps for Ianto Jones.

* * *

_Dear Jack,_

_If you’re reading this, then I’m dead. Probably. At least I hope I am, and you haven’t found this by accident. That would be horrible to explain._

_Let me start over. If you’re reading this, then I’m probably dead, and as cliche as it sounds, I hope I went down bravely, saving Cardiff - or the world - like Owen and Tosh._

_If I am dead, there is no reason for me to remain cowardly, so I might as well tell you that I love you. I hope you already knew that, or otherwise, this will be a nasty shock. Of course, I also hope you love(d) me back, but that would be a bit much to ask the universe. You’re a force of nature, Jack Harkness. Loving you is like loving the sun, too bright and powerful to reach; I can only bask in your warmth and hope that it will always be enough for me. And so far, it has._

_Listen, I didn’t plan on loving you; it just happened. I didn’t plan on loving Lisa either, but once I met her, I couldn’t not. She was the most wonderful person I ever met, so bright and funny and kind. You would have understood if you’d known her….before everything; you would have loved her too. She was one of those people who was meant to be loved._

_So are you. So many love you, Gwen, Martha, John. Owen and Tosh did. I am lucky, rather, I was lucky, to have loved you. I would have spent the rest of my life by your side if you’d let me; I meant to._

_(Sorry, this is a horrible way to find out; I’m sorry, Jack.)_

_Keep the Hub running without me. Give my best to Gwen. Care for Myfanwy for me. Give her plenty of dark chocolate. Make sure you train the poor sod who comes after me in how to care for the archives; I’d hate it if they ruined my three years of effort, because you forgot to train them._

_I’m rambling now, because there’s something I have to tell you, but I haven’t got the strength or courage. Out with it, Ianto, I guess._

_I love you, Jack, but I haven’t always been honest with you. I’ve been lying to you about my past...there’s some things I found about my time at Torchwood One, some truths that turned out to be lies. I wasn’t just a junior researcher there. I mean, I was, but I was also Yvonne Hartman’s PA, almost her second-in-command._

_I didn’t tell you, because you would never hire me then. You may not have despised Yvonne, but you didn’t trust her and you definitely would not have trusted her minion. Yet she trusted me immensely, and I her, and it was only recently I found out that she betrayed me in the worst way possible, that she manipulated me. I understand now why she did it, and I forgive her, but it is too much to explain here._

_There is an address listed below, and if you visit it, you will understand, Jack. I’m so sorry, but you deserve the truth now._

_I love you._

_Yours, forever and always,_

_Ianto Jones_

* * *

Jack drives furiously to London, breaking all kinds of speed laws, but he doesn’t care. He never really did, but he definitely doesn’t now. He weaves his way through the lanes, ignoring the frantic honking behind him, and arrives in the city an hour earlier than he really should have.

The address is Ianto’s letter is located half-way across London from the ruins of Canary Wharf, which makes sense. Yvonne wouldn’t have allowed her secrets to be so closely linked together.

The betrayal of finding out that Jack’s lover, that Ianto, had lied to him had _hurt,_ and still does, but it’s overpowered by his need to know, his need to discover what Ianto did.

Jack’s car screeches to a halt outside of a large brick warehouse, not too unlike the one Rhys had declared the Hub 2.0, which is now clear of any Torchwood resources, also raided by Johnson and her men. There are many windows littering the sides of the building, but Jack notes, more importantly, the heavy metal door of alien origin and the advanced slim scanner placed by the door. He strides toward it and carefully thumbs in Ianto’s Torchwood personnel number, as per Ianto’s instructions.

For a brief moment, nothing happens. There is silence. Jack takes a step and waits, shoulders tense. He resists the urge to tap his foot, mustering as much as the Time Agency patience he was trained with as he can.

Slowly, _very slowly,_ there is a fainting whirring noise, and a faint succession of clicks as the door unlocks, and when the noise stops, Jack yanks the door open and steps inside the warehouse, the fluorescent lights flickering on and flooding the place in brightness.

Inside is not what Jack expected. A wooden desk with an older computer is tucked up against one corner. There is a large number of servers and a slim generator that resembles a hybrid of some of the Hub’s technology and some of what Torchwood One had developed. Most prominently, however, is the hulking black machine that looks like an MRI scanner. Jack recognizes some of its outer components as being based on a Sontaran design.

_Where did Yvonne get her hands on Sontaran technology?_ wonders Jack, but it is a futile thought. Yvonne is dead, along with most of Torchwood One, and Ianto is not around to tell Jack. 

The faint whirring sound continues, and Jack whirls around, Webley unholstered, but is forced to come to the conclusion that the sound is issuing from the machine, which has hummed to life. The control plan glows with an array of lights, but when Jack prods at it to stop, nothing happens. It is completely automated. His vortex manipulator has no effect either.

Not for the first time, Jack wishes for a sonic screwdriver. Or the ability to travel back in time and punch the Doctor in the face.

“What the fuck?” Jack mutters but watches helplessly as the machine glows brightly with sterile white light, making rhythmic hums. He creeps closer, but the light blinds him from the internal logistics of the machine.

Finally, the light flares even brighter, briefly searing itself across Jack’s vision, before dimming out. The machine stills and powers down with another hum. Carefully, Webley held high, Jack makes to approach the machine, but there is movement from inside.

With graceful movements, just as balanced and hyper aware as he was in life, Ianto Jones clambers out of the strange black machine. He winces when his bare feet touch the cold concrete floor. He’s extremely, extremely naked, but Jack’s too shocked, eyes wide, mouth gaping, to take notice. 

Ianto glances around the warehouse curiously before his gaze lands on Jack and he lights up.

“Oh, hello, Jack!” he says, smiling brilliantly. “Thought you’d never come.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rajkumarinik). I tweet and reblog mostly Torchwood with occasionally amusing commentary on nonsense. Please come talk to me and tell me if/how much you like my fic or like ask me about it on tumblr; all my schoolwork has become remote now, and I have limited social interaction.
> 
> Reblog the tumblr post for this fic [here](https://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/post/630392956643344384/title-the-world-is-at-my-feet-i-am-standing-on%20rel=).


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